Girl Power in Kenya

The sponsorship of a girls football project in Kenya brings great rewards...One of the most rewarding projects undertaken by The Football Association under its International Development Programme is the sponsorship of a girls football project in the coastal district of Kilifi in Kenya.

Sarah Forde, an FA qualified coach from Norwich, England, runs the 'Moving the Goalposts' project which encourages schoolgirls to play football. Sarah visited London last month to update The FA on the significant progress made during the first year of the three year scheme.

"When I arrived in Kilifi, only a handful of girls played football at school" she explained. "But now, 1,280 girls are playing and 50 teachers are involved in making girls' football an integral part of the community".

In giving life to the project, Sarah has not only worked on developing skills in a sport previously only available to boys, but has found herself faced with the task of dispelling cultural myths and changing attitudes within the community. Girls, for example, had been told that playing football could make them infertile!

Whilst boys, unused to seeing a girl play football, now regularly turn up after school to watch matches between the girls teams take place.

"This is the first time girls have been encouraged to participate in football in this district, " said Sarah.

"It is quite literally transforming their lives". "The project is a perfect example of using football to build a better future", said Jane Bateman, Head of International Relations at The FA.

"Whilst The FA is focusing significantly on women's football - now the biggest female participation sport in England - and recognise an ongoing need to work hard at encouraging participation in our own country, there are parts of the world where even the concept itself is completely new. We are pleased to support a project overseas which promotes the expansion of the game".

Earlier this year, FA funding enabled Sarah Forde to appoint a young assistant, Rose Maua Konde. At 21 years old and one of a family of 11, Rose is passionate about her job.

Despite a 2-3 hour wait for a bus in the morning, and a precarious one hour journey to work every day, working on the Moving the Goalposts project has not only confirmed her love of football, she says, but has given her new skills and confidence in herself and her abilities.

Rose has written to TheFA.com to tell us about her life and her work in Kilifi...

My name is Rose Maua Konde. I am 21 years old and I come from Kenya. I live in Kilifi District on the coast, in Sokoke location. I am working with a girls' football project known as Moving the Goalposts Kilifi, which started in the year 2001. I want to take you through a day in my busy life.

Normally I wake up very early in the morning, around 5:30 a.m. I don't even have time to eat breakfast at home. I go to the bus stage to board a matatu (public vehicle) from Sokoke to Kilifi town. It is a dirt road and has a lot of pot holes which means the driver has to go slowly.

It is 21 km from my home to where I am working but the journey normally takes one hour. Sometimes it becomes difficult for the vehicle to pass through the road when it rains because the soil on the road is clay and the vehicle skids and slides its way to Kilifi. So I may wake up early in the morning and go to the bus stage and wait for about 2 hours or 3 hours for a vehicle to pass. From this situation I have to leave home that early so that I can be at work by 8:00am.

When I arrive in the office I make myself a cup of tea and think about the day ahead. Back at home my family consists of my father, his 2 wives and 11 children, including me. My mother is the second wife to my father and she is working at Kilifi police station as a policewomen.

Mum gave birth to five children, 2 brothers and 3 sisters. Out of the five, one is still in school but will finish this year, 2002. At home we speak mostly Kigiriama, which is our mother tongue. But I also speak two other languages, Kiswahili, our national language of Kenya, and English, which we learnt in school. Mainly in work we speak Kiswahili and a bit of English here and there.

When I was in primary school and just starting to play football my mum tried to stop me from playing. She believed that if I played football I would go on to have problems giving birth to my children after l got married. But my father would give me permission to play because he was once a player.

Through the courage and support from my father I gained confidence with football and played in school until I finished my form four at Sokoke Secondary school.

I then started to help out with Moving the Goalposts. I volunteered to do any work in the office and even trained the girls with the knowledge of football I had.

From this project l have been able to earn respect from the community. Teachers who used to teach me at school look at me differently now and even girls see me as a role model because they have told other people they want to be like me when they are older.

I now know how to use a computer, Word, Excel, Access and Power Point, and I have helped run Sports and Leadership courses in coaching and refereeing. This has given me confidence in whatever I am doing in the project. At first I thought things would be difficult but now I can do anything and I have a lot of interest with MTG because football is my favorite game.

I have organised a football tournament for 16 clubs with the support of my colleagues, Jacquelean and Sarah and I was the referee for the final of the MTG 7 a side tournament earlier this year. With Jacquelean I am training some teams because we are taking two teams to Nairobi for a tournament.

The motto for Moving the Goalposts in Kiswahili is 'Tunaweza' - that means 'We can do it!' and we want to show people that this is true. When I coach the girls I mostly teach them ball control, passing and shooting and a bit of physical fitness. The players really want to know a lot about football and become professional players in the world. Most of them are disciplined and serious about football.

When I finish training with the girls' teams I go back home. There are not many vehicles that go to our home. Sometimes I can wait for more than one hour for the matatu, so I might not reach home until 7.30pm. When I arrive home I cook for my family everyday in the evening. Mostly we eat maize and beans, rice and ugali (our staple food of maize flour) and relish.

By 10 or 10.30pm I go to sleep, very tired. During weekends I wash my clothes and iron them after they have dried in the sun. On Sundays I rest and visit my friends.

Getting back to football, let me tell you one more thing about Rose Maua Konde. Earlier this year I played in a tournament in Nairobi for a team from Mombasa called Mombasa Railways. The scouts from the national team were there.

They selected me to play for the Kenya national team. They were going to play in America. The problem was I couldn't travel because I did not have a passport. Since that time I now have a passport and I still believe that one day I will play football outside Kenya.