Sport has the power to bring about positive change in communities and in society, but currently girls are 50% less likely to participate in sports. Also, when we start our interventions, we notice that we attract fewer teen girls than boys in our activities. Time to change this.
Social Inclusion training for coaches
That is why we start training Community Based Organisations (CBOs) and affiliated coaches on how to recruit girls for the sports activities – especially from the very start of our interventions – and how to engage girls in such a way that they are keen on participating. In April, ISA East Africa trained 25 coaches from 6 different regions across Kenya in a 5-day course on the social inclusion of girls in their activities.
Mariam Twahir, social inclusion trainer, explains some of the activities they did during the training: “The coaches started mapping where girls can be found in their community, including their own activities. They also thought about challenges and opportunities for girls in the communities for sports participation. It is especially good to look at the opportunities too! For instance, to think about what are the safest spaces for girls in their neighbourhood, and to use that or learn from it.”
“Another activity was to visualise the needs and wants of girls, and to link it to what coaches, CBOs, or the community can offer them, or can learn from them. To do so, the coaches did a role-play as market salesmen and women, whereby each stakeholder was selling their resources to someone that needed it. For example, organisations offered the very important safe spaces and mentorship to girls. Girls offer their time and talents. And parents offer their consent for the girls to go out and play. It became very clear that the CBOs have several resources to offer that can help girls to participate. And that coaches can learn from the girls, if they listen to what it needs to get them involved.”
Coaches start bringing more girls to the playing field
The training ended with each team of coaches from the same community, having an action plan in place for upcoming activities that will recruit and include more teen girls. And an event was organised for 100 community youth.
Mariam adds: “Among the key learnings that the coaches mentioned are: seeing the opportunities in their communities to increase girls’ participation in their activities, and the realisation that they can use the skills they already have as a sports coach.”
It will all add up to ISA’s successes on including girls and women, as participants and as leaders. Besides the growing number of girl-participants, we also see the number of female coaches increase to almost 45%. So much important as role models to girls.
Want to know more about why girls play less sports, and how we make sure they do start participating and eventually be leaders in our programmes? See all about it in our Leaflet
