Words by Smiley Team
The Pamoja Initiative in Lemu, Kenya 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.
The Pamoja Initiative has been recognised for its work done within the local community, seeking to use swimming as a tool to address women’s safety. In Lamu, women and children make up 80% of drowning cases and as a result, whenever a boat capsizes in Lamu, there is a strong chance that there will be no child or women survivors. This initiative hopes to change that.
In Lamu, water is the only guaranteed mode of transport and yet historically water safety has not been taught to girls, as it is the boys who use the water to swim or fish whilst the women remain at home.
Drowning is not the only risk to the lives of young women in the area. Lamu County is one of 15 counties that contributes to over 60% of maternal mortality, the highest numbers of early childhood marriage and female genital mutilation. The Pamoja Initiative seeks to use swimming as a tool to address women’s safety and empowerment around decision-making when it comes to reproductive health.
Pamoja Initiative works to be able to offer affordable access to the swimming pool for women and children to learn life-saving water skills. They also work to to engage a full-time female lifeguard & coach, something had never been available in the past and this has seen more women feel comfortable with learning to swim. Furthermore, the initiative works to to conduct peer-to-peer training sessions around reproductive health and through swimming competitions.
“Beyond Sport has been the best form of SDG radical love for the Pamoja Initiative's program that works with girls swimming for change in Lamu, Kenya."Umra Omar, Co-Founder, Pamoja Initiative, said.
"Our work to promote gender equity and give the future a better chance of surviving in water bodies now has the platform to scale and sustain.”
Now in its 12th year, the 2020 Beyond Sport Global Awards will celebrate, support, raise awareness and provide funding for ways sport is being used to help make the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) a reality.
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, which aims to achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls and, in turn, advance society as a whole.
