Help Empower Afghan Girls through Sports

According to the developed plan, “Girls’ Volleyball Tournament” was launched on September 14^th, 2017 in an opening ceremony that was organized at Sooria girl high school of Kabul city with participation of officials of Kabul Department of Education, education sections, schools, coaches, the CPD senior staff and others. Volleyball matches were started from September 17^th, 2017 and lasted for 11 days until 28 September, 2017. Tournament was organized following double knocked out system and the number of matches significantly increased to 28 matches in total. Initially, it was planned to be single knocked out with a total of 16 matches) and therefore, the tournament needed to mobilize more resources and energy. After very tough competitions among 16 participating volleyball teams of girl high schools of Kabul city, the following teams reached the semifinal and ranked as top four winning teams:

• Sooria high school, 1^st position;
• Malalay high school, 2^nd position;
• Rabia high school, 3^rd position;
• Alfath high school, 4^th position.

Closing ceremony was organized on 28 September, 2017 in the gymnasium of Ayesha-e-Durani girl high school of Kabul city with participation of senior officials of Kabul Department of Education (including Director of Kabul DoE, heads of education sections, a number of principals of participating schools and etc), representatives of Afghanistan National Olympic Committee, the CPD, teachers, students, media and etc. Media was invited to provide coverage of the final match and closing ceremony. Cups, gifts and appreciation letters were awarded to top winning teams during the ceremony and commitments were made for continuation of such efforts aimed at empowerment of Afghan girls in future by all the parties including the Kabul DoE and the CPD. 

Links:

• Official website of the organization (CPD)
• Official Facebook page of the CPD

This is the third report of project "Help Empower Afghan Girls through Sports". By implementing this project, we aim to prevent girls from harassment in public places, workplace and schools in order to enjoy their social life as equal humans as boys. Our intervention is engaging girls in sports activities and specifically organizing girls’ volleyball tournament of around 16 teams. As reported earlier, CPD is thinking of finding the ways to transform the project from being a onetime activity (girl volleyball tournament) into a recurrent action extended to years to come. In consideration to the changes brought to the initial planning, project was revised and approved by GlobalGiving. To raise required financial resources for the project, it became part of different crowd-funding campaigns of the GlobalGiving (including Christmas Giving 50% match). 

We have been focused on raising needed financial resources to sponsor the tournament since mid-2016. However, the crowdfunding results are not as per our expectation, but still, we can claim that the basic funds to organize at least one tournament is raised and sticking to the voluntarism nature of our organization, the CPD, we are confident to launch the process. 

Our negotiations with Department of Education (DoE) of Kabul city is still going on and we hope to have the final schedule of girls’ volleyball tournament as soon as possible. Logistical plan of the tournament is drafted by the CPD that will be shared with Kabul DoE authorities in the upcoming joint planning meetings. Identification of 16 girl volleyball teams based on their qualification is also part of the planning meetings. Worth to mention that qualification phase is started among different schools of Kabul city that will lead to rank top teams eligible to compete with each other in the tournament. 

Links:

• Official website of the organization (CPD)
• Official Facebook page of the organization (CPD)
• Official twitter account of the organization (CPD)