Girls on the bottom- How do we break the cycle?
– Sarah Oxford –
I’ve observed girls sports programs throughout East Africa for a couple months now. And although evidence is mostly anecdotal, I wholeheartedly believe that these programs make a big difference in girl’s lives.
Research concerning girls and the impact of sports hasn’t been conducted to the extent needed. What has been done is research in Western nations that can be used as insight to the importance and benefit in the lives of adolescent girls there, and thus as a motivator for more research to be done in places with budding youth sport programs like East Africa.
In 1997 The Presidents Council on Physical Fitness and Sports researched and documented a positive correlation between girls and regular participation in sports. The report stated that these girls “tended to do better academically and have lower school drop-out rates” and “showed reduced symptoms of stress and depression…”A follow-up report revealed that female athletes in the United States “tend to become sexually active later in life, have fewer sexual partners, and, when sexually active, make greater use of contraception than their non-athletic counterparts.” (MYSA, Letting Girls Play, 2002).
Let’s not assume that there is a direct correlation between athletes across the globe, as people face various challenges in studies of this nature, but let’s also not ignore what sports can give a child.
A typical child raised in a slum is born into a world of disadvantages. Her health, sanitation, and nutrition will not be of standard. She will be less likely to attend school and more likely to be introduced to violence and sexual promiscuity. It’s the brutal cycle of poverty.
Mathare Slum, Nairobi, Kenya
However, give her an organized sports team and many of those ailments can be alleviated. She can face challenge without dire consequence (decision making on the pitch), she can form a family away from home, and she will partake in exercise that benefits her health. Now couple her team’s practices with an educational curriculum that uses an interactive educational methodology to teach about Aids prevention, puberty, sexual relations and conflict resolution. On top of that she is given a free number to call for any reason (most often domestic or gender based violence) and told she has free access to lawyers. Being a part of a program of this nature definitely beats idleness or remaining in an unsafe environment all day. The cost to her is nothing, the gain, everything.
MYSA U-13 Football Champions
I’m not saying this team won’t make up for child-abuse, because nothing can replace a loving and providing parent. No it doesn’t make up for rape and it won’t give her dinner money that she can find by partaking in forced prostitution.
But it will give her the opportunity to see that there is more to life than the world she knew before joining the team and more importantly it will provide her with the skills needed to move away from—or improve—her world.
football4peace 