On December 17th 2024, a dodgeball tournament fundraiser for schools in India took place at Wideworld Sports Center. The fundraiser raised over the amount of money intended and supported the cause exponentially. In India, students have to pay for both private and public school. Therefore, many people don’t have access to a good education. The students who organized the dodgeball fundraiser saw the problem and wanted to support the cause.
“There’s a lot of poverty and homelessness in India,” says Adarsh Nadgir (‘25). “Through our dodgeball tournament we are raising money for those kids to have a good education and better resources.”
Although it was a friendly tournament, there was still a competitive atmosphere and stakes were high. Players competed for a cash prize of $300 to be distributed among the members of the winning team.
“The competition level was good and we had some hard games,” says winning team player Nehith Kumar (‘25). “It made the tournament really fun and competitive. I think our team was able to win because of our well-roundedness. We are all pretty skilled athletes, which made us hard to stop.”
The competition was district-wide, organized by student members of Skyline and members of Saline Interact, a club that goes out of its own way to help support the community at the local and international level. They organize fundraisers, bring together the community, and often engage in leadership tasks and activities.
“The fundraiser is a way to help k-5 kids to get an education so they can eventually get scholarships and become 6-12 students at a public school,” says Nadgir. “For example, the money would go to kids being able to have access to lunch, textbooks, computers, and other resources.”
When organizing this fundraiser, they first booked a venue, the popular sports location Wideworld. They then raised awareness and created sign ups and teams through social media. Each player had to pay 15 to participate and some of that money was pooled together to create the prize pot for the winning team.
Event organizers felt it went extremely well with the limited time they had to both plan and get the information out. “Through the dodgeball fundraiser we raised 1,478 dollars,” says Nadgir. “In the short time we had we did really well and got 14 teams to participate, the original goal was 16 so we were very happy with the outcome.”
