Sports to Empower Women & Girls in Rwanda

This first football competition brought together 12 schools from UNICEF child friendly schools. These teams were selected from all over the country and were made of girls aged 7 to 13. The purpose of such an activity is to inculcate the culture of sport in the mentality of the Rwandan youth, much as a new culture can be ingrained from an early age, most girls and women will be able to campain against genderbased violence and their rights through sports as well as they grow up

The overall objective was to empower  women through sports. This event took place in four different Provinces namely Kigali City, Western, Eastern Pr I and Eastern II. Each Province had three primary school teams that competed and the winners were Kanyiya (from Kigali City), Rubona (Western Province), Rubona Ngoma (Eastern Province I) and Kiziguro (Eastern Province II). The 2 teams that came first received sports equipment (whistle, balls ...).

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Rwanda depends on agriculture, which is mostly done by women, so they grouped themselves in cooperatives and did the process of registration so that we may help them develop modern farming in order to fight poverty.

As you can see the teams that were ready to participate in a friendly match in the Northern provinces started by planting Irish potato seeds with many women that came to support the initiative that was brought over by AKWOS

The seeds were donated by Association of Kigali Women in Sports which organized the event and the winner received sports uniforms. It was an exiting moment after which the local leaders of that province donated a 5 hector land in support for the women football teams. This event took place on the 7th march 2011.

This idea came about after the workshop that took place in February 2011 on how to fight gender-based violence and campaign against poverty which was organized by AKWOS in partnership with WomenWin and Global Giving.

Many thanks goes  to the donors that do their best to support our organization. You are doing great things to promote Women in Gender Equity Through Sports.

We believe that if you educate a woman, you educate the nation.

It was an exiting moment to see more than 2000 women coming to cheer the game and about 500 men in our support which never existed before.

Is it possible to get a feedback from the donors? We need to hear the generous comments and advice from our donors. Tell us what you think about our activities. Thanks for being there for us.

These are the new captain  of schools that were attending the training of trainers course organized by AKWOS with the main objective of teaching them the role of sports for health and development .

It was a 5 day workshop with different lessons  such as children, rights, fight gender based violence, awareness in  the prevention of HIV and AIDS, Conflicts Resolution through sports.

In the workshop they were taught how they can become role models in using sports for social change. This training was opened officially by the Executive director  Mme Rwemarika Felicite and conducted by Nyinawumuntu Grace the National Women’s coach  who spoke  of her experience as role model and the rest were given by AKWOS coaches who are highly skilled in different topics mentioned

It was followed by the female teachers who were given training on the role of sports in promotion of gender rights ,Gender based Violence, unity and reconciliation and how to introduce many teams in schools and keep at least 30 minutes of giving different topics during the resting time and were asked to introduce a timetable for sports as it was realized that before they came for training they mentioned that they did not have time for sports.

AKWOS will do the monitoring and evaluation after 3 month, then organize competitions between the new teams with the funding from UNICEF and Right To Play .