Pune: 12 year old football enthusiast, Rudresh Gaudnour has been selected to represent India as a young journalist at the global Football for Friendship (F4F) social programme. The F4F programme, supported by Gazprom and FIFA aims at developing youth football and a healthy lifestyle, as well as promoting tolerance, open-mindedness and respect for different cultures and nationalities between children from across the globe. This year, the F4F programme has expanded to 211 countries and regions. This is the second time that India will participate in the programme.
Rudresh will join young journalists from around the world in Moscow, Russia in June 2018. He will actively report on all the local and global activities of the F4F programme as part of the International Children’s Press Center. He will also spread awareness on the Nine Values (friendship, equality, fairness, health, peace, devotion, victory, traditions and honour) of the F4F programme.
Rudresh will be participating in the Football for Friendship International Children’s Forum in Russia, where the youngster will get a chance to meet his peers from other countries, share his experiences, and discuss with famous footballers and journalists on how to promote key values of the F4F programme around the world. He will be joined by Surya Varikuti, the 12 year old Bangalore kid who was selected as the Young Footballer from India. Surya will play a friendly football match with an international team of his peers in the Gazprom Football for Friendship International Championship in Russia. Both of the participants will also get to watch the opening ceremony and the first match of the FIFA World Cup 2018.
Rudresh was shortlisted as the F4F Young Journalist from India in association with Just For Kicks (JFK), a school intervention programme working towards developing life skills amongst children belonging to lower income families by incorporating football training in their school curriculum.
Son of a vegetable vendor, Rudresh has exhibited academic excellence by consistently topping his class since 2nd grade. A student of Pandit Deendayal Upadhyay Municipal School, he started playing football at the age of 8. The 7th grader currently plays for the JFK Pune team and mentors Under-8 football teams. His parents have been incredibly supportive of his passion and have proved it by using their limited means to buy him things that will help him play better.
Speaking on the selection of Rudresh as the young journalist Neha Sahu, Co-Founder, Just For Kicks and Director – Operations, Enabling Leadership said, “We are thrilled to have one of our kids selected to represent India at F4F for the second year in a row. This time it’s even more significant and special for Just For Kicks since our budding 12-year-old footballer, Rudresh is going as a Young journalist to Russia! He has been a part of the JFK program for over three years now and is a wonderful representative of all the life skills we look to develop in our children. His thoughts on how football can make the world a better place reflect his communication, respect, empathy and critical thinking, both JFK & F4F actively promote. We can’t wait for our Young Journalist, Rudresh to embark on his first international trip from a municipal school in Pune directly to the World Cup in Russia!”
