By Anuradha Chatterji | Director, Resource Devlopment
It’s My Body: Advancing Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights of Adolescent Girls through Sports
A community-based program led by CREA and co-implemented with 12 partner CBOs* in Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Jharkhand.
Training of Female Football Coaches
The period of March to May 2017 was rewarding for the programme as 36 girls from three states and 12 partner organisations attended a week long residential training that sought to build these girls as the first female football coaches in their communities.
Finding female coaches has been a challenge for the programme and so training of selected girls to become coaches is an additional strategy that has been added to the programme.
36 girls, (3 girls from every organisation) who had been through the curriculum based programme were purposively recruited for the coach’s training. While having female football coaches as a part of the programme meant greater ease in carrying out session activities, it also meant making the intervention more suitable , specific and sustainable to their local context. The female coaches will be positive role models for the adolescent girls who they will coach. This initiative will also empower the coaches to take up football in a more serious and constructive manner.
The training was designed keeping in mind the role that these girls would be playing and the challenges that they would face once they are back to their communities as coaches. Having been a part of the programme previously had exposed the girls to the idea of gender based discrimination and stereotyping that impacts their everyday life. Becoming coaches meant challenging norms that have persisted in their communities.
The training focussed on the technical aspect of football and discussed concepts of power, patriarchy, body, bodily autonomy and inclusion through interaction and group work. The participants were asked to document their feelings and thoughts in the form of a visual diary. The visual diaries gave us an opportunity to see the change that this week-long training triggered in these young minds.
A girl expressed her wish to include girls with physical disabilities in the football training that she will be conducting.
“I am a coach. This is a girl. She doesn’t have an arm. If I am ever in this situation, I will not tell her to go away. I will teach her with the same love (that I have for other players).”
*List of IMB partners:
Bihar:
Jharkhand:
Uttar Pradesh:
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