Women Win partners with U.S. Department of State to Empower Girls Through Sport
Women Win, sponsored by the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA), has launched an international exchange programme, aimed at empowering marginalised girls in Nepal and the United States through sport.
With that goal in mind, the strategy of the programme is based on a) building the leadership of individual sport for social change practitioners and b) providing partner organisations with the means to improve their capacity to address gender inclusion and girls’ rights through sport. The international exchange programme is a part of SportsUnited, ECA’s Division devoted to sports diplomacy as a tool to increase dialogue and cultural understanding between people around the world.
Maria Bobenrieth, Executive Director of Women Win said, “Adolescent girls around the world have incredible potential to drive change in their lives and their communities. Through sport, they can learn powerful lessons of resiliency, goal setting and confidence. However, girls are often the last ones invited to play - facing a multiple bias in access based on age, gender, and conservative cultural beliefs. By strengthening the capacity of leaders in organisations who are working with girls through sport every day, and sharing best practices between those organisations, we believe those girls will become better equipped to exercise their rights and develop their leadership.”
Carefully selected participants from U.S. based NGO Soccer Without Borders and Nepal based NGO Empowering Women of Nepal will spend time in each other’s countries, sharing experiences in using both team and outdoor sports, such as trekking, and cross pollinating promising practices for designing and delivering girls’ sport programmes. The programme will include a digital storytelling workshop and will yield a series of videos about participants’ sport experience, as well as 10 community change projects implemented in rural Nepal, during a time of great need in the country.
The first exchange will take place in Nepal, from March 4 – 12, and will include a trek through the Annapurna region, a football clinic for local school children organised by the local embassy, and visits to EWN’s sport and life skills programme. Nepalese participants will travel to the U.S. from July 16 - 22 and will hike in Yosemite National Park, participate in a Digital Storytelling workshop and visit Soccer Without Border’s soccer programme in Oakland, California. The cross-cultural experiences of the participants will be captured and shared online by Women Win.