Tejas R is the founder and director of Sparky Football. A national level football freestyle champion, Tejas’s passion for football began at a very young age. At the age of 20, Tejas identified the need to engage youth in an effective manner to enable positive youth development, and founded Sparky Football with the intention to create India’s under 19 football team comprising solely of underprivileged youth. A TedX speaker and a “Hero of Bangalore” awardee, Tejas has numerous accolades under his belt for his tireless efforts towards youth empowerment. An avid traveler, Tejas combines his love for football and travel, creating football documentaries as he travels across the globe while working alongside Sparky Football’s partners and collaborators on joint projects. Tejas envisions, creates, and facilitates a better environment for all youth he works with and is determined to champion the Sparky Approach as a choice for youth across India to experience and benefit from.

Sparky Football’s motto “Make Your Wounds Proud” represents a critical construct identified, inculcated, and nurtured amongst all youth in our programs: resilience. The concept of resilience has been well researched to inform policy and practice in diverse field, and has also found use as a construct when assessing positive youth development. Tejas R, the founder of Sparky Football, coined this motto to enable youth hailing from diverse backgrounds, some with distressing past experiences and demanding societal conditions, with the skills to grow and adapt positively. The motto presents a narrative emphasized in all Sparky programs – every youth’s individual capacity, regardless of surrounding stressors, to “bounce back” from difficult experiences to achieve beneficial outcomes, with the help of protective factors provided through all Sparky programs.