A group of young girls aged between ten and 18 years old gather together at the village sports ground. The girls are from a small rural village and they are meeting for their regular netball session.
Situated in Dedza District, this village has high rates of poverty, limited access to health services, safe water and sanitation, and low literacy levels. Most girls in the village drop out of school due to economic constraints and often experience gender-based violence, including early marriages.
Grace is one of the girls at the village ground. Grace is 15 years old and is the fifth of six children. She has just started her secondary education at Chimbizi Community Day Secondary School. Grace has been part of United Purpose’s Girls INSPIRED netball project for one year. Before joining the project, she had no career goals or plans for her future. All she wanted to was to finish her primary education and get married.
Through the Girls INSPRIED project, Grace has learnt to see life differently. She has acquired the ability to make informed decisions and has a stronger sense of self-worth: “The project has taught me the value of being an independent person,” she says. “If it were not for this project, things would not have worked out for me. My greatest goal in life now is to complete my education”.
Grace now has a role model and wants to be like Yamikani Flao, the Project Manager of Girls INSPIRED. Grace is grateful for the encouragement she has received and for her friends whom she met at the netball sessions. She has seen some of her close friends dropping out of school and getting married: “I do not want to imagine myself in their situation and I feel so sorry for them because we started school at the same time, but they already dropped out”.
For Grace netball has become much more than a sport. The netball sessions have helped her gain self-confidence and have inspired her to dream and set goals for the future.
Context
Girls INSPIRED is a project funded by Comic Relief that empowers young girls, aged between 10 and 18, through netball. The project inspires girls towards reaching their full potential and has so far empowered and enabled 480 girls from five villages in TA Chauma, Dedza district, to influence their lives and those of their peers through sport. Through participating in the netball-based training and empowerment programme, the girls acquire a stronger sense of self-worth and recognition of their value. They become aware of their legal rights and responsibilities, and how to access key services relevant to their well-being, such as sexual/reproductive health, nutrition and legal protection.