Decathlon India is the Indian counterpart of Decathlon S.A., one of the world’s largest sporting goods retailers. Decathlon Foundation, its CSR wing, has been an employee-volunteer project since 2005, with many of its social programmes driven and facilitated by Decathlon employees.
Under its mission, Decathlon is committed to making sport a vehicle for social integration, while also helping children remain fit and healthy.
Sportz Village Foundation developed a framework to strengthen Decathlon’s employee-driven schools programme through three key stages:
Evaluate the impact of Decathlon’s employee-volunteer-driven schools programme.
Identify gaps and opportunities, and create a structured go-forward plan.
Enable scale by offering practical tools, resources, curriculum and training support.
Sportz Village Foundation assessed the impact of Decathlon’s employee volunteering initiative in sports through a pilot study conducted across three selected schools.
The study focused on schools in Bengaluru and Mysore that were selected by Decathlon.
The impact evaluation included:
Qualitative inputs were collected through feedback and programme observations, while quantitative inputs were gathered through fitness assessments.
The evaluation included the Sit and Reach Test, a fitness parameter used to assess flexibility.
The assessment compared children participating in the Decathlon programme with children who were not part of the programme across Decathlon OMR, Decathlon Mysore and Decathlon Car Warehouse locations.
The evaluation highlighted a clear opportunity to bring more structure to existing sessions and improve the consistency of programme delivery.
The programme could be strengthened by:
There was an opportunity to better equip volunteers and trainers by introducing a Train-the-Trainer model and mapping key programme inputs and outcomes more effectively.
The study recommended setting up a basic monitoring and review system, supported by timely programme monitoring and reporting.
Continuous assessment and impact evaluation were recommended to help refine the programme over time. Key areas for measurement included:
To help Decathlon scale its volunteer-led community programme, Sportz Village Foundation proposed developmentally appropriate tools, training and a structured engagement model.
Sportz Village Foundation would provide its sports curriculum, MILES, for children in Grades 6 to 8.
MILES is designed to:
The MILES model works with groups of 20 students and four student leaders.
Students participate in two sports modules, with two teams of 10 students each. Each module runs for six weeks, and schools may choose the same sport for both groups where needed.
The programme includes:
Sportz Village Foundation proposed orientation and training for Decathlon’s core team.
Workshops would train 10 master trainers on implementing the curriculum. These master trainers would then train other employee volunteers to support the programme’s execution across schools.
The programme also included a sample assessment report to measure children’s fitness, skills and socio-emotional learning.
The Fitness Quotient would assess:
The programme would also track changes in socio-emotional learning through baseline and end-line assessments.
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