Share:
Nobel Peace Prize laureate and girls’ education activist Malala Yousafzai is turning her lifelong passion for sports into a new initiative to drive equality through athletic opportunity. Announced at last month’s Billie Jean King Power of Women’s Sport Summit in London, the global ‘Recess’ program is designed to boost women’s and girls’ participation in sports.
Co-founded with her sports executive husband Asser Malik, Recess was inspired by her childhood in Pakistan, where boys dominated the playground and girls were sidelined. “I remember in school recess time when boys would go off to the local cricket playground and girls had to stay behind,” she shared in a CNN Sports interview. “From that point onwards, I knew that sports was something that girls did not have easy access to.”
Recess’s takes a two-pronged approach to enhance women’s and girls’ rights through the platform of sport. First, by increasing grassroots access to sports for girls, and second, by investing in professional women’s leagues. The initiative aims to correct decades of underinvestment and stigma as well as showcase women’s sports as a lucrative business.
“Women’s sports are growing fast, not just in visibility, but in influence. Yet they are still one of the most underinvested sectors in the world. From the field to the owner’s box, Recess wants to change the game for women and the girls who look up to them,” she stated in an Instagram post.
An avid sports fan, Malala regularly attends major women’s sporting events and champions athletes as role models. Recess is backed by advisors and sports legends such as Billie Jean King and Ilana Kloss, and is already setting its sights on the National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL) and the Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA). She sees both as high-growth opportunities and leagues with strong social missions.
Malala founded the Malala Fund in 2013 to champion educational rights for girls and the following year became the youngest person to receive the Nobel Peace Prize at the age of 17. Now 27, she’s expanding her work by investing in sport. In a time of global conflict and uncertainty, she believes sport can play a vital unifying role.
“We are capable of dialogue, we are capable of coming together and sports, in history, in the current times, have proven to be that powerful way of bringing communities together…We could be competitive, but at the same time, when the game is over, we can hug each other, shake hands and recognize that we’re all one humanity,” she said in the CNN interview.
Share:
