{"id":1213,"date":"2021-10-11T22:05:49","date_gmt":"2021-10-11T16:35:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/successandability.org\/?p=1213"},"modified":"2024-03-01T06:25:52","modified_gmt":"2024-03-01T06:25:52","slug":"serving-aces-driving-inclusion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/abilityfoundation.org\/2024-new\/serving-aces-driving-inclusion\/","title":{"rendered":"Serving Aces, Driving Inclusion"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n
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Sunil Jain
Founder of Astha Foundation and Chief Enabler at Indian Wheelchair Tennis Tour (IWTT).<\/figcaption>\r\n<\/figure>\r\n<\/div>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

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Speak to Sunil about tennis and the passion shines through. \u201cIt is such a wonderful game for personal development,\u201d he says. \u201cWhether you are a person with or without disability, it brings perspective into your life.\u201d Through tennis, Sunil and his team at IWTT strive to bring about inclusion and personal transformation. Their program First Serve creates awareness about wheelchair tennis, encourages current players to coach communities, and trains future players by providing them access to coaches, courts, food and accommodation. The organisation is also building accessible courts for players with and without disability to come together. This way, Sunil believes, tennis can foster inclusion and empathy. \u201cEspecially if we catch players young,\u201d he is quick to add.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Much of IWTT\u2019s approach is rooted in the inherent advantages of wheelchair tennis as a sport. The sport follows most of the same rules as non-disabled tennis, with the only exception of allowing players on a wheelchair to return the ball on two bounces. Sunil saw this as an excellent opportunity. In 2014, two years before IWTT was officially launched, he organised a jugalbandhi <\/em>tournament, where doubles teams, each with one player on a wheelchair and one non-disabled player, came together in a series of friendly matches. The success of this event sowed the seeds of what would grow into IWTT.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

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Since its inception in 2016, IWTT has conducted over 10 tournaments. Each tournament comes with a Rs. 2.5 lakh cash prize. The number of wheelchair tennis players in the country has grown from 27 to over 90 during this time. \u201cWhen we began, we had four women players across India,\u201d Sunil recalls. \u201cNow we have over twenty-one. We are even participating in the Tennis Premier League on a team with non-disabled players!\u201d<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

In Sunil\u2019s eyes, the key to scaling this impact lies in building awareness. \u201cSports, especially para sports, has not penetrated into our community,\u201d he rues. \u201cIn 2011, I had not even heard of para sports and the Paralympics. Access to sport is still not universal. Its inherent potential is not available to everyone.\u201d To address this, IWTT consciously builds awareness around para sports, particularly wheelchair tennis. When the organisation was launched in December 2016, Sunil decided to make it a celebration like no other. The team put up multiple hoardings in the city of Bengaluru and invited tennis player Rohan Bopanna as the chief guest. They conducted a tournament, the Tabebuia Open, named after the flower that blooms only in the winter. \u201cIf a beautiful flower can blossom in the cold winter, wheelchair tennis will flourish in the world today,\u201d Sunil explains.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Sunil has big dreams for the future of wheelchair tennis in India. IWTT has set out to transform the sport in India, adopting a 360-degree approach that works on everything from grassroot awareness to governance reform. In the short run, IWTT is encouraging players to engage with and create communities. Over time, the team hopes to expand its scope to other racquet sports as well. In five years, IWTT wishes to be consultants for the promotion of accessible sports across India. In the meantime, as far as tennis is concerned, the milestones are clear \u2013 participate in the 2022 Asian Games, win an Asian Games medal in 2026, bag a Paralympics medal in 2028, and impact at least 1000 lives with every medal won. Driven by Sunil\u2019s big dreams and IWTT\u2019s strong convictions, the future of wheelchair tennis in India looks exciting.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

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\"Yashasvini<\/figure>\r\n
Yashasvini Rajeshwar<\/span>\r\n

Yashasvini Rajeshwar is a social entrepreneur as well as Editor of Success & ABILITY. She has been associated with Ability Foundation since 2006<\/em>.<\/p>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

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What would it be like if persons with disabilities had the opportunity to live a life of complete participation and contribution?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1231,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[35,36,37],"ppma_author":[184],"class_list":["post-1213","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-yashasvini-rajeshwar","tag-paralympics","tag-parasports","tag-sports"],"acf":[],"authors":[{"term_id":184,"user_id":0,"is_guest":1,"slug":"yashasvini-rajeshwar-2","display_name":"Yashasvini Rajeshwar","avatar_url":{"url":"https:\/\/abilityfoundation.org\/2024-new\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/Yashasvini-2.webp","url2x":"https:\/\/abilityfoundation.org\/2024-new\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/Yashasvini-2.webp"},"first_name":"Yashasvini","last_name":"Rajeshwar","user_url":"","description":"Yashasvini Rajeshwar is a social entrepreneur as well as Editor of Success & ABILITY. She has been associated with Ability Foundation since 2006."}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abilityfoundation.org\/2024-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1213","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abilityfoundation.org\/2024-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abilityfoundation.org\/2024-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abilityfoundation.org\/2024-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abilityfoundation.org\/2024-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1213"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/abilityfoundation.org\/2024-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1213\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2981,"href":"https:\/\/abilityfoundation.org\/2024-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1213\/revisions\/2981"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abilityfoundation.org\/2024-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1231"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abilityfoundation.org\/2024-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1213"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abilityfoundation.org\/2024-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1213"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abilityfoundation.org\/2024-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1213"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abilityfoundation.org\/2024-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=1213"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}