Beyond Sport Foundation Spotlight: Girl Determined
With Beyond Sport United and the Global Awards now under two months away, we’re taking a 10th anniversary look back at some of our past winners, and how they have progressed with the support of Beyond Sport and our Foundation.
We have been supporting organisations for many years that use sport to promote equality in their communities – Girl Determined is one of those organisations.
By providing direct sport leadership programming to adolescent girls in Myanmar, they seek to change the way girls are viewed, both by girls themselves and by their surrounding community.
Around the age of adolescence, girls from poor and rural families are expected to contribute to household chores which often come at the cost of a girls’ education or freedom. Girl Determined programming aims to empower these girls by developing a combination of increased confidence, self-awareness, and knowledge, to enable them advocate for their own rights and goals.
Their flagship initiative, Colorful Girls Volleyball Circles, is a structured two-year program in which over 2,000 girls from across targeted communities come together two times per week. Program sessions employ the Colorful Girls Circles life and leadership curriculum which uses creative, experiential activities and discussion to build self-image, knowledge, and awareness.
In addition, Girl Determined conducts an annual Girls’ Leadership Summer Camp, an annual Girls’ Conference, girls athletics programs and Girl-led Campaigns that give adolescent girls a chance to advocate for change on issues that directly affects them. Using volleyball as a delivery tool, the curriculum stresses topics such as communication, teamwork, and health.
Funds from the Beyond Sport award were allocated to cover core costs related to the Volleyball Circles programming across 40 communities around the country, including both weekly sports sessions and tournaments. The funds are used towards coaches’ salaries, purchasing of basic sports equipment, and transportation to project sites. The funds have enabled 1,991 girls to attend weekly sports and leadership sessions under the supervision of 35 women coaches.
Beyond covering the operating costs, Girl Determined have been working to improve their operations by strengthening their monitoring, evaluation, and research capacity. This work includes creating a participant database and a general overhaul of the tools and methodology used for measuring change.
At the start of 2018, they established a Girl Peer Research Unit with ten young women alumni. This initiative not only provides valuable data to measure impact, but it also gives the young women enumerators a new set of marketable skills that can lead to economic empowerment and career development.
Girl Determined stand for Global Goal 5 (Gender Equality) and Global Goal 10 (Reduced Inequalities).
If the Global Goals are achieved, it would mean an end to extreme poverty, inequality and climate change by 2030. Beyond Sport believes that using sport is an effective and game-changing approach to make this happen.
From September 12 - 13, we’ll hold our 2018 Beyond Sport United and Global Awards in New York City. Join us to hear directly from more organizations who are using sport to drive social change in communities across the globe - all with a special focus on youth engagement, leadership and social action. We’ll be awarding over $350,000 to the most innovative projects using sports to address the UN SDGs, so don’t miss your chance to see who wins this year’s awards!
Make sure to secure your spot today!