Patna: A silent revolution is taking place at Mastichak, a remote village in Saran district, 40 km away from Patna, where poverty-stricken girls are not only being encouraged to play football but also groomed as healthcare professionals. Thanks to an out-of-box idea of linking football with girls’ education by Mritunjay Tiwari, a former professional footballer from Kolkata and a native of Mastichak village, nearly 800 girls of the locality are employed as optometrists and at least 15 of them have even participated in national-level football tournaments.Under the initiative of “football to eyeball” programme, launched by Tiwari to fulfil his mission, Akhand Jyoti, a charitable eye hospital, also located in the same village, is providing all necessary help. In turn, the hospital is also getting trained optometrists.This unique programme, said Tiwari, uses football as an icebreaker to negotiate opportunities for young girls. Girls aged between 12-16 years are nurtured to aspire to become professional footballers or optometrists or both. This initiative is instrumental in targeting gender-based inequalities, exploitation and child marriage—all of which afflict Bihar—and to provide equal opportunities to them, he said.“We work as a hub-and-spoke model wherein football is a crucial instrument of change. Our motto for the programme is teach football to the girls and draw them out of their homes. The eye hospital works as a hub for this programme. The spokes are the villages where outreach camps are held at regular intervals,” he added.Football is introduced as a sport to these girls under the supervision of a physical instructor in the local govt school of the village. Once a girl develops an interest in the sport, the institution offers them to join full-time and reside at the hostels within the hospital centre. The entire cost of education, training, and living is undertaken by Akhand Jyoti with an objective to motivate these girls to become ophthalmic personnel and role models for other girls in their local communities.Both football and eye care offer significant opportunities to the girls for a sustainable livelihood with the bonus of improving gender parity in the society. The parents of these girls, in fact, execute an undertaking not to marry their wards before the age of 23.Furthermore, as part of its “Vision 2030” Akhand Jyoti plans to carry out 12 million eye screenings and two million eye surgeries. By that period, the hospital would train 1,500 rural girls as professionally qualified optometrists to drive its blindness elimination programme. New hostels and other infrastructure facilities are being created to accommodate the additional new girls into the programme every year, Tiwari added.