Words by Smiley Team
The Kenyan Leave No One Behind: Moving the Goalposts campaign has been announced as one of four winners of the 2020 Sport for Gender Equality Collective Impact Award supported by Comic Relief and the BT Supporter’s Club.
All four organisations will receive significant investment to work together over the course of the year to use sport to develop a collective approach to advance gender equality and society as a whole.
Moving the Goalposts is a sport for a development organization founded in 2002 in Kilifi, in the rural Coast Province of Kenya. Moving the Goalposts engages girls in football and uses the sport to help disadvantaged girls and young women to become leaders and create better futures for themselves. They create safe spaces for girls and young women to help them understand their rights and claim them. Taking up leadership roles and have a voice in the society.
The organisation’s vision is to help bring a fair, just and inclusive world where the rights of girls and young women are acknowledged, respected and realised. Since its founding, Moving the Goalposts has worked with over 30,000 adolescent girls and young women aged 9 – 25 years from rural and informal settlements in the coastal region of Kenya. They receive training and leadership opportunities to organise and run football activities, peer education programs on sexual and reproductive health, women’s rights and economic empowerment.
Moving the Goalposts provides pathways and resources for girls to continue in education, vocational training and find income-generating activities or employment, including opportunities within the organisation.
“Winning this award means HOPE and more... for every girl born today and for every girl who dreams to play sport." said Moving the Goalposts Executive Director, Dorcas Amakobe.
"It means a strong force created like never before in the community of sports for development to celebrate the gender equality goal in every corner of the world.”
This 2020 Beyond Sport Collective Impact Award has a focus on gender equality. In its second year, this cutting-edge program will increase support and investment to a group of organisations to work together to share best practice and work through issues in real-time to create community-driven solutions to accelerate sustainable impact through sport.
The initiative will invest £225,000 in grant funding and a comprehensive business support package in four organizations across eastern and southern Africa that are using sport to progress Goal 5 of the UN Sustainable Development Goals: Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls and, in turn, advance society as a whole.
