Build Community through Sport for Girls in Jordan

At Reclaim Childhood, the coaching staff is at the heart of everything that we do. Made up of Jordanian and refugee women from the same communities as the participants we serve, coaches recruit girls, maintain ongoing communication with their families, supervise bus pickup and drop off, and run all of our practices and camps. While that list is already long enough, it doesn’t even speak to our coaches’ most important role: building caring relationships and acting as mentors for every girl that comes through RC’s programs.

One of RC’s main strategic pillars is investing in coach development to support these women in what can be a challenging role. We have long run coach clinics before each season, interspersed with one-off training sessions. This fall, we had the opportunity to invest even further in coach development. Thanks to the support of the Viking Global Foundation, we partnered with Edgework Consulting, one of the global leaders in trauma-informed coaching.

Over four days, twenty coaches and Maren from Edgework dove into the overarching question of how healing happens and how RC can be a part of it. Many of RC’s participants (and coaches) have experienced trauma, whether through displacement, conflict, poverty, or a combination of factors. Research shows that when designed correctly, sport can be a powerful force in recovery.

The training’s goal was to link the brain science of the effect of trauma on the brain with specific techniques and games that our coaches – in this critically important role of caring adult – can use at RC programming to support girls dealing with this. With this in mind, we spent more time on the field than in the classroom, mirroring the coaches’ context (and having a whole lot of fun playing new games)!

After a fantastic fall soccer season, we’ve transitioned into basketball season for the rainy winter, and it’s been amazing to watch coaches put the training into action at practice. We’re grateful for this opportunity and we can’t wait to see how it continues to make RC programming a healing space for all girls!