Sylvester Peter started My Angels Academy 29 years ago when he was 13 years old. While studying at a government school in New Delhi, he witnessed the long-term impact of poverty and the ill effects of being underprivileged. 29 years later, Sylvester Peter, more popularly known as Sylvester Bhaiya, is persistently forging the dream of rendering an all-round development environment to the slum kids near Vikas Puri in New Delhi.
Sylvester discovered the everlasting consequence of improper education like corruption, drugs, crime, negativity, etc that these kids were receiving, and at a very young age of 13, he decided to act upon the situation. He started My Angels Academy to impart the right education to underprivileged children living in slum areas.
My Angels Academy is an unusual approach for educating kids. Unlike an institute or organization that aims to nurture underprivileged kids through books, My Angels Academy is using sports, Football, to teach and train these kids. The training is rigorous and happens at odd hours of 3 in the morning to keep it very professional. Before the start of each day’s session, kids have to clean the ground as part of their warm-up.
“Ours is a holistic approach. We believe that attaining moral values is as significant as becoming a scholar or a professional footballer and so along with football, kids are exposed to other cultural and interactive activities like dance, music, classes on environmental studies, and time to time team outings to places of natural and historical significance and values”, says Sylvester.
Sylvester reveals that before coming to the academy most of these kids were thieves, beggars, rag pickers, etc., and had already generated a negative and unhealthy meaning of life.
Sylvester believes in training these kids from a very early age where the mind is impressionable and moldable and so he ensures that these kids receive lectures on moral values, sex education, gender equality, and other topics of life on an everyday basis. The Academy offers kids an opportunity to ‘Learn and Earn’ by providing venues as a football trainer, coach, ball boy, yoga trainer, etc.
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