Project empowers girls in two communities
Most girls in the northern part of Ghana face many challenges, and are forced to do a lot of things that prevent them from realising their potentials, in their efforts to escape the effects of poverty, which is one of their major challenges. Some of them are confronted with the problem of early marriage, child labour, migration to the south to ‘work’ as female porters (kayayie), school drop-out, among others.
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The problems could also be attributed to negative perceptions, religious and traditional beliefs and other practices meted out to girls.
One important step identified to help address the challenges is the need to empower them to come together to discuss these issues affecting their development.
Addressing challenges
To address some of these challenges facing them, a citizen of the United States of America (USA), Sarah Nieburg, came to the Northern Region and worked in partnership with Right To Play, an international non-governmental organisation (NGO), in collaboration with the Randolph-Macon College and the Davis Foundation, both in the USA in 2014, to empower the girls through the use of football to discuss issues and share ideas on issues militating against their welfare, growth and development. They also built their capacities and skills to enable them to overcome the is challenges.
Sarah’s project dubbed “Playing for Peace,” focused on using football as a gender empowerment tool to empower girls in two selected communities in the Northern Region. The communities were Kpatuli and Gbulagahu in the Savelugu municipality and the Tolon district respectively.
Selected communities
Kpatuli was selected for the project because of its high fertility rate of 4.3 per cent, which is higher than the regional average of 3.5 per cent, and the high rate of teenage pregnancy in the community, while Gbulagahu was selected because the drop-out rate among girls in school was a challenge and for that reason, most of them could not climb the academic ladder.
These communities have similar traits where young girls of school age, moved to the south in search of non-existent jobs, and ended up working as female porters.
The project empowered young girls in these communities by organising them to form girls football teams, and each of the teams was supported with sports equipment including boots, footballs, jerseys, and other sporting equipment.
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Projects
While the young girls were playing football, it brought them together to discuss issues affecting their welfare and development. The girl’s team in the Kpatuli community was assisted to cultivate a soya bean farm, while those at the Gbulahagu School, had a maize farm to provide them with a source of income to meet their needs.
Recently, Sarah, who initiated the project through the support of her partner organisations, visited the beneficiary communities to see the progress of the projects, and to support them with some funds to expand the project this year.
The income-generating activities helped to create sustainable incomes for the girls to get some funds for use on sanitary towels, school uniforms, exercise books, pens and sports equipment and to continue with their education and play football.
Impact
To many parents, the project had changed their perception about girls coming together to play football. One of the parents at the Gbulahagu School, Aisha, specifically suggested that the girls should have a female coach so that they could have someone to look up to and also aspire to.
Again, majority of the girls who participated in the project when it started two years ago are now in senior high schools, and are mentoring new members at the junior high schools.
Some of the girls in an interaction with the Daily Graphic said, the project had helped improve their confidence level to say no to early marriage and had made them stay focused rather than to migrate to the south to ‘work’ as female porters.
“We love to go to school and play football because we learn a lot of life skills such as communication, friendship, assertiveness and others, through football”, they stated in separate remarks.
In Kpatuli, the success stories were similar. A 17-year-old girl (name withheld), who was supposed to get married because her family could not afford to pay her school fees, said through the project, she was able to say no to early and forced marriage and was able to stay in school and paid her fees.
Second phase
The project, which is now in the second phase, had supported the girl’s football teams in the two beneficiary communities with 30 football boots, 40 shin-guards, 3 sets of soccer socks, two sets of jerseys, sports bras, sanitary towels, three sets of bibs, 12 footballs and other equipment, as well as GH¢2,000 to expand their income-generating activities.
At a presentation ceremony at Kpatuli, the Project Officer for Right To Play, Mr Samuel Oppong Kwabiah, emphasised the importance of sports in achieving developmental goals and the role being played by his organisation in the use of sports to promote development in some deprived communities in the country, in the area of education, health and peace building.
The Savelugu Municipal Chief Executive (MCE), Alhaji Alhassan Abdulai Red, who received the items on behalf of the team, urged parents to support their children to stay in school rather than giving out their hands in marriage.
He pledged the preparedness of the assembly to support the prosecution of any man who impregnated a child below 18 years and parents who gave out the hands of their children in marriage before their 18th birthday.
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Some parents and community members at the ceremony in an interaction with the Daily Graphic expressed happiness for the implementation of the project, and pledged their continuous support to it.