Project to insert sport in the lives of poor young people

Insert sport in the lives of underprivileged children and monitor their physical development to improve their physical and mental health.

The intention with the project is to take underprivileged children and adolescents off the streets and encourage them to practice sports and physical activities in general to increase the physical and mental health of each one of them free of charge. Nowadays, according to the g1 website, 78% of Brazilian children move less than what is recommended by the WHO (World Health Organization), spend the whole day using their own smartphones and do not spend more energy playing together in the street with their friends, along with the lack of accessibility and incentive to sport that helps to increase sedentary lifestyle. Therefore, the proposal of the project is to increase the rate of physical activity of young people, preventing health problems such as diabetes, obesity, hypertension and even anxiety and depression. 

In addition, access to sport can generate greater interest in young people, which can lead them to become high-performance athletes with great careers that can change their lives and their reality.

The proposed solution aims to reduce the rate of sedentary lifestyle among young people throughout the national territory through the inclusion of sports and physical activities in general in schools and open spaces. From this, I want to use monitoring devices, such as watches with a heart rate monitor, to monitor the performance and physical development of each athlete/young person to monitor their well-being.

Currently many children and young people spend the day just using their smartphones without practicing any sport or physical activity or due to lack of interest or lack of accessibility. Low-income people say they don't have access to any sports project because of the cost, while the others say they don't want to or something like that. With this project, the intention is to create a space that serves and welcomes people of all ages and incomes so that they become more physically active for the prevention of physical illnesses, monitoring the development of each one.

Since I was 8 years old I have been playing sports and it has become my passion. I started practicing kung fu for 5 years and now it's been 2 years since I've been playing basketball at school where I have a full scholarship. I truly believe that this passion I carry for sport can grow much more if I can plant this seed of sport in the lives of children and adolescents who live in the same conditions and in the same community as I do. 

My team partner, Gabriel Marques, who also has a full scholarship at the same school as me, is in a similar situation because he also enjoys sport as a hobby. In addition, he is able to contribute to the project to monitor the performance and development of each young person based on the analysis of data generated from devices such as, for example, heart monitoring watches, etc.

The desire to create the project came from my own experience with the problem. I currently live in a low-income neighborhood in São Paulo and I always see young people on the streets without many activities to do and this creates the possibility of involvement with crimes, etc. Until I was 8 years old, I did nothing but play in the street and I experienced this for a long time until my parents put me to practice sports at an NGO close to my house, something that was a great influence for the beginning of my passion for sport. Nowadays, I have friends and I see many people who want to play sports more often but don't have access to quality sports, because of that, I feel obliged to repay the favor that one day was done for me, so that other young people can too experience the sport at its best.

My solution is innovative because in addition to promoting the practice of sports for underprivileged and sedentary young people, it will monitor their development and physical performance, preventing heart disease, for example, and also possibly creating high-performance athletes with Olympic potential. The idea is to use electronic devices to measure heart rate, blood oxygenation and even the blood pressure of each athlete during sports practice.

With this project, I want to impact the lives of many young people, encouraging them to be more physically active, both for the prevention of physical illnesses and for the prevention of psychological illnesses, showing that sport saves lives. I want to achieve these goals through the work of my team and possible helpers, whether from private companies or the local government itself.

The technology used in my project will be watches with wrist heart rate monitors that make it possible to monitor heart rate, blood oxygenation and blood pressure through a system present in watches called photoplethysmography which, mainly, uses small LEDs at the bottom of the watch that emit light green or red. Its different wavelengths interact in different ways with the blood flowing through the wrist, and after that, the light is captured by the watch's sensors and sent to algorithms that interpret the received data provided as information transmitted from the user. After collecting the data, they are sent to an application on the watch itself on each user's cell phone and will be exported to a database created in Excel, which will allow data analysis so that there can be a return for young people according to their evolution in the sport. In addition, I wish, based on studies, to increase the level of physical performance of athletes based on specific individual training for each one, to make them competitive athletes if they want to.

I intend, with this project, to reach as many people as possible. Around 40 people initially, with the potential to grow exponentially. I want to first develop a realistic and firm project and then expand the idea to more people.

 Currently, the biggest problem for carrying out the project is the financial cost of it all. Generating space for the practice of sports requires a lot of money, as well as hiring top professionals in the area of physical education and also the purchase of materials that would be used in classes.

I currently have a partnership with Ismart, which is an institution that offers full scholarships to low-income students.

For this project, the customer segments are young people in general, but with an emphasis on low-income young people, who often find themselves bored at home without any productive activity. The project's great offer of value is to improve the health of adolescents and children through sport, developing skills such as motor and cognitive intelligence and increased physical and mental health. I intend to provide this service based on classes with highly qualified physical education professionals to teach different sports of interest to young people and, based on this, meet the need for physical activity that each body requires for well-being.

I imagine that if my project to win the Solv[ED] Youth Innovation Challenge 2022-23, it will have greater visibility and possibly be able to count on government funding or greater partnerships with private companies to carry out the project. In addition, I plan to use the winning amount precisely as initial funding for the project in question.