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Football (or soccer in the United States) is currently being used as a morale and health booster for drug addicts and HIV positive inmates at Sahara House in New Dehli, India.

Quoted From Breitbart News:

Some 200 people are at any one time involved in various therapy programmes run for the past 28 years by Sahara in the south Delhi suburb of Greater Kailash, according to Chowdhury.
While women are engaged mainly in handicrafts, men focus their energies on football -- and a rock band they have formed at Sahara, which terms itself "a therapeutic transitional community".
"Football has made me feel part of society as it has brought me back into the mainstream," says Diosiam, 33, who like many Indians uses only one name.
"I was fed up with life but could not get out of drugs. During rehabilitation, football gave me a zest for life and I now play in Delhi's A division league," he says with pride.

Isn't it funny how something so many Americans play for fun can be seen as such an important and useful tool in other countries? Many Americans view soccer as nothing more than a casual passtime from our childhood or the thing we drive our six-year-old to play on the weekends. But for these men in India, it is a chance at a new life. It is a chance to be part of a community again. It is a chance to have strength and hope again. To feel "normal".

A little about Sahara House:

Sahara House, New Dehli, India
(Quoted From: Hart Leadership Program, Duke University)
Sahara House was founded in 1978 as a residential treatment center for substance abusers. In the 1990s, Sahara House expanded its programming to include a wide range of services for people living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA). Currently, Sahara House operates homes for recovering substance abusers and PLWHA, a referral service for clients not living in the centers, and prevention and awareness activities in disadvantaged communities. While the majority of Sahara House's operations are in Delhi, the organization also has projects in Pune, Mumbai (Bombay), and Manipur State.

http://www.nooked.com/news/itemtrack...0cd57162c115fb

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