The 12-rear-old son of a vegetable vendor, Rudresh Gaudnour, has been selected to represent India as a young journalist at the global Football for Friendship (F4F) social programme. The F4F programme, supported by Gazprom and FIFA aims at developing youth football and a healthy lifestyle, as well as promoting tolerance, open-mindedness and respect for different cultures and nationalities between children from across the globe. This year, the F4F programme has expanded to 211 countries and regions. This is the second time that India will participate in the programme.
A seventh grade student of Pandit Deendayal Upadhyay Municipal School, Rudresh has been topping his class since the second grade. He started playing football at the age of eight, and currently plays for the Just for Kicks (JFK) Pune team and mentors under-8 football teams.
Rudresh will join young journalists from around the world in Moscow, Russia in June. He will actively report on all the local and global activities of the F4F programme as part of the International Children's Press Centre. He will also spread awareness on the nine values — friendship, equality, fairness, health, peace, devotion, victory, traditions and honour — of the F4F programme.
Rudresh will participate in the Football for Friendship International Children's Forum in Russia, where the youngster will get a chance to meet his peers from other countries, share his experiences, and discuss with famous footballers and journalists on how to promote key values of the F4F programme around the world.
He will be joined by Surya Varikuti, the 12-year-old Bangalore kid, who was selected as the Young Footballer from India. Surya will play a friendly football match with an international team of his peers in the Gazprom Football for Friendship International Championship in Russia. Both of the participants will also get to watch the opening ceremony and the first match of the FIFA World Cup 2018.
Rudresh was shortlisted as the F4F Young Journalist from India in association with Just For Kicks (JFK), a school intervention programme working towards developing life skills amongst children belonging to lower income families by incorporating football training in their school curriculum.
