ASIA / PACIFIC
July 3, 2017
THE ASIAN REPORTER n Page 3
Rural Indian girls get discrimination-fighting tool: soccer
By Kristi Eaton
The Associated Press
UTUP, India — The aging bus
meanders through the narrow
streets of a tiny village in the
eastern Indian state of Jharkhand, the
smell of manure wafting through the air. A
thick darkness blankets the neighborhood
ahead of the early morning sunrise.
It’s 5:00am, and the young girls hop on
the bus, one by one. They range in age from
slightly older than toddlers to young
women approaching their 20s. Some carry
soccer balls.
They are heading to an immense empty
field where they will hold their daily soccer
practice, the younger ones eager to perfect
their ball-handling skills while the
teenagers act as coaches, earning money to
pay for their education.
For all of the girls, soccer — or football,
as they call it — is an opportunity for them
to overcome deeply entrenched discrimi-
nation in their rural villages.
“We like to play football because there
are only girls, some boys, but the teachers
say if I have a problem, I can solve it with
them,” says 13-year-old Pratibha Kumari
as she walks to her home after practice.
Pratibha was alluding to the biased
views toward gender in India, particularly
in rural areas like her village in
Jharkhand. In India, 12 million adolescent
girls — almost one in five — have
experienced physical violence since the
age of 15, and 2.6 million girls between 15
and 19 years old have experienced forced
sexual intercourse or a forced sexual act,
according to statistics from UNICEF. In
Jharkhand, six in 10 girls marry before the
legal age of 18.
“This is the part of India no one in the
cities of India really sees. But this is India
— this is the norm,” says Franz Gastler,
founder of Yuwa, a nonprofit organization
teaching girls soccer. Gastler, who
originally hails from Minnesota, started
Yuwa in 2009 and added a school for girls
in 2015. “Boys just harass girls here — it’s
the norm and older women have grown up
being abused, so they are used to it.”
Yuwa seeks to empower the girls by
showing them they have the right to focus
on their education instead of getting
H
married and starting a family, and the
right to choose their life path. For several
of the girls, Yuwa has allowed them to
travel outside of the area around their
village for the first time. Some have taken
trips around India or even to Spain for a
tournament.
About 300 girls participate in the Yuwa
soccer program and about 80 of those girls
attend the Yuwa School for Girls, Gastler
says. The organization, which has received
a Nike Game Changers’ award, also hosts
workshops to educate about health and life
skills, such as menstruation, and parent
meetings. Yuwa received more than
$200,000 in monetary donations and
grants and in-kind donations in 2016 from
public and private sponsors, according to
the organization’s financial records.
Before the soccer drills start at the early
morning practice, the girls laugh, cheer,
and gossip to each other. Here, on the
soccer field, their backgrounds don’t define
them. But as they share their stories, it’s
easy to see the obstacles they face.
Neeta Kumari, 17, is one of six children,
five girls, and one boy. (The vast majority
of girls in Jharkhand State have the title of
kumari, which means unmarried girl,
until they are married and it changes.) Her
parents kept having children until they
finally had a boy. Her three older sisters
got married at 16 and 17, she says, and
never finished their education. Now they
are mothers with little hope for their
future. But they support Neeta’s dream to
become a journalist and her enthusiasm
for soccer.
“I feel very good because my sisters are
supporting me,” she says.
Having changed out of their soccer
shorts, cleats, and striped socks, the girls
arrive at the small cement school on the
Yuwa campus in groups. Some arrive just
as morning assembly starts, their hair still
wet from washing it after practice.
An assembly features skits performed
by some of the girls in the language of
Sadri, one of several languages spoken in
Jharkhand. The state is home to 32
indigenous tribes, each with its own
unique culture. About one-quarter to one-
third of the girls at Yuwa are indigenous,
but most speak Sadri at home, says Rose
Thomson, education director at Yuwa.
Though the school teaches English and
OFFERING OPTIONS. Senior students of
Yuwa, a nonprofit organization that teaches girls soc-
cer, practice during the early morning in Ormanjhi,
Jharkhand state, India. For all of the girls, soccer —
or football, as they call it — is an opportunity for them
to overcome deeply entrenched discrimination in their
rural villages. (AP Photo/Rishi Lekhi)
Hindi, Thomson says it’s important for the
girls to speak Sadri. “They have this idea
that there is a hierarchy of languages:
English, Hindi, and then Sadri. They’ll get
embarrassed to speak their own language.
We talk about it quite a bit about how they
should be proud of it and should speak
their own language.”
Radha Kumari was taunted for playing
football. “Why are you playing a boy’s
sport?” her family would ask her. She,
instead, was supposed to be doing her
chores and grazing cattle. Though she was
12, she had never attended school. Then
she heard about Yuwa and the other girls
attending a tournament in Spain.
Radha, now 14, decided she should do
the same thing. She joined the soccer
group, travelled to Spain for a tournament,
and has now become a coach, teaching the
younger girls drills and exercises and
earning money to attend school. Older
girls like Radha train to become coaches
and earn money to pay for their education,
teaching them that they can be self-reliant
and earn their own money. She now
dreams of becoming a mechanical
engineer.
“When I see my world, when I look at
nature, bridges, airplanes and I think
about it, it’s so creative and beautifully
made and I want to do something like
that,” she says.
“I have a desire to learn something new.”
Kristi Eaton reported this story from India while
a fellow with the International Reporting Project.
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