Moving the goal posts for girls

SARAH FORDE, 40, left her home in Britain and came to Kenya to pursue her passion in coaching football to girls in marginalised communities. She spoke to LINDA KEYA

As we settle down for the interview, Sarah Forde, founder of Moving The Goalpost (MTG) — a girls football and development programme in coastal Kenya, hands me a book.

“Let me tell you,” she starts, “Kenyan coastal girls talked to me about love, school, sex and football.”

I quickly glance at the cover of the book and I realise she was actually introducing me to the title of the book Let Me Tell You — a collection of eleven eye-opening and insightful interviews that revealed the lives, thoughts, challenges and hopes of teenage girls from Coast Province.

Sarah has spent years working and playing football with these girls.

“It is through this process of bonding that they shared with me their intimate stories — their fractured, yet supportive families, the struggle to stay in school, dealing with drowning sexuality, boys and men, and their hopes and plans for a better future,” says Sarah.

Deep conversations

The book is a product of a project she worked on with MTG in Kilifi. MTG reaches out to about 3,000 girls with the aim of providing them with opportunities to fulfill their potential through among other things, football.

Sarah, a radio journalist, writer and football coach, began having deep conversations with the girls after football coaching sessions and at her free time, to understand about their lives.

After two years of playing with them, sitting, listening and noting down each girl’s story, she compiled them into a book, which she says will serve to get their voices heard by a wider audience.

“Many government policies and development programmes target adolescent girls, but the voices of these girls remain unheard in drawing interventions. So, in 2005, four years after founding MTG, I started working on the book,” she says.

But Sarah’s story does not start here. Her love for football began 35 years ago when she was only five years old. She grew up in Cambridge, UK and she is the second born among five children — one boy and four girls.

Two years after her father’s death, Sarah’s mother remarried.

“My step father was God given considering he took my mother and the five of us without reservation. He raised us like his own,” she says. 

She played football through school and remained focused on the sport. When she eventually joined Newcastle University to pursue a degree in Human Geography, Sarah decided to join the university’s girl’s football team.

Back then, girls’ football was alien, but there was no turning back for her. She had already made it her first passion. She horned her skills in the game and also developed an interest in writing.

Upon graduating from university, she knew she wanted to communicate about girl’s football and hence volunteered at BBC sports desk. She later secured a permanent job as a sports reporter.

While at the sports desk, she persuaded editors at BBC to give women football stories more airtime and within no time, the game gained popularity, not just in the UK, but the world over.

In the year 2000, Sarah came to Kenya where she met her husband and later settled in Kilifi District. It is also during this time that she conceived the idea of training girls to play football. The concept was quite new in Kenya and more so, at the Coast where people are still reserved.

But Sarah had her eyes set on using the sport to reach out to the girl-child whom she says faces many complexities in life. She always believed that football, in particular, could provide opportunities for girls — girls playing football makes people wonder what more they can do. It makes people think about their prejudices against girls.

Champions

“I was convinced that sports could be used to address issues of girls dropping out of school, early marriages and pregnancies, as well as empowering young girls with life skills,” she notes.

She spoke to a couple of friends and together, they agreed to set up MTG that secured them a little funding. They began by coaching football to pupils from Mnarani, Kilifi, Kilimo and St Thomas Primary schools in Kilifi.

“We also organised tournaments for them and established football fields where the girls could train and compete for the MTG champions league,” she says.

Currently, all the 3,000 girls participate in the tournaments and the football leagues. Also, one girl has been selected to join the girl’s football national team.

Aside from football, the programme also entrenched peer education on reproductive health issues for the girls. Her main purpose is to ensure that the girls are empowered to take leadership roles in whatever they engage in.

However, Sarah left MTG after it become clear that she had set up a working framework. She set up a home office for consultancy in areas of girl’s football.

At the moment, she is working with a group of women from Netherlands and Street Football World Networks — a global network of organisations that work on development through the use of football. Sarah has no apologies for having a bias for women issues.

“Women have so much potential that has not been harnessed fully. This is why I’m committed to empowering and fighting for removal of inequalities in my small ways. Playing football helped me realise that there was gender-based unfairness and someone needed to address it,” she says.

It fills her heart with joy when the girls and young women she started training at age of nine call her just to check how she is fairing.

“They enjoy spending time and talking to me, knowing I will not judge them,” she says.

She also finds fulfillment in the fact that teachers and parents who initially didn’t see the value of girls playing football now appreciate it, having seen the opportunities girls have gained through playing football.

Some of the girls are among the more than 20 staff members of MTG, others have taken on local leadership positions, and have had the chance to travel locally and abroad.

Several teachers and community leaders in Kilifi have now warmed up to the idea of football and are proud of what the girls in MTG are achieving, hence want to work with them to make Kilifi a safer and more equal place for girls to grow up in.

Looking back

“I remember matatu journeys back from specific interviews where I felt very depressed and helpless. I questioned what I was doing, wondering what the future held for these girls. However, we also laughed at times,  showing me how resilient they were and I became close to all of them. I’m still, seven years after we first met, in touch with all of the girls and we talk often — this keeps me going,” she says.

Even so, the interviews taught Sarah much about how different people’s lives are and realised where and when one is born has such an impact on their opportunities in life.

For the future, she is planning to do a ‘7UP’ kind of follow-up and interview the girls again now that most of them are in their early 20s. Or work with a smaller number of three and interview them in greater depth about how their lives have changed.