Help Empower Afghan Girls through Sports

CPD would like to thank you again for the continuous support to our project especially in the difficult times of coronavirus and now, during the socio-political power shift in Afghanistan. Same as you, we are also concerned of the future of our social empowerment programs and are regularly observing the situation. For the time being, our decision is to keep the project active and have the alternative of project amendment in need. We had very impactful professional girl sport tournaments under this crowd-funding project in close coordination with line government departments especially Ministry of Education and hoping to continue supporting Afghan girls to practice their human right of accessing public spaces, recreation, edutainment and assembly.

We, the team CPD, are looking forward to your generous support during these critical times. Afghans suffer extreme financial problems due to severe shortfall in economic activities and financial restrictions enforced on Afghanistan by the international community. Financial restriction and freezing reserve funds of Afghanistan have directly affected the people and contributed to nation-wide food insecurity and paralyzing public service delivery by the new regime. All these have unfortunately deprioritized social change development programs including our project aimed at girls’ access to public spaces, recreation, edutainment and assembly. As before, COVID-19 and its consequent restrictions and insecurity incidents by IS-KP are also preventing implementation of social change programs; read our past report dated May 14, 2021 for details. In such a scenario, priority comes to survive the organization and the minimum level of its operations until the situation gets improved. 

Links:

• Official Facebook page of the CPD

Updates during third COVID wave:

Since onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in Afghanistan in March/April 2020, CPD has paused sport activities at public schools of Kabul city. Unfortunately, it is time to face the growing “third COVID wave”. However, no lockdown is enforced in Afghanistan in 2021 and public services and places like schools, Masjids, bazaars, governmental and non-governmental offices, parks, restaurants, hotels and etc. are functional, but there are certain limitations on social activities including sport events. Another reason of such limitations is increasing insecurity that is also affecting educational institutions, their staff and students as soft targets. We are regularly watching the situation and looking forward to get back to relatively normal situation to restart our community-based activities on promoting women and girls’ access to public spaces, recreation, edutainment and assembly.

We will keep our esteemed donors, stakeholders, beneficiaries and audience posted of the updates in coming reports. These updates will include what works and what doesn't work in the context of COVID-19 in terms of empowering Afghan girls to access public places, recreation, edutainment and assembly. 

Implementation challenges during the first and second COVID waves:

The year 2020 presented unexpected challenges with the arrival of COVID-19 and economic and social unrest around the world. Charities and civil society across the world faced difficult times due to unprecedented circumstances caused by COVID-19 pandemic. These have been challenging times for everyone, and it is only by coming together in solidarity and struggling to sustain the good work we all were doing before the pandemic. However, it needs time enough to adapt to new context and it is feasible by re-planning our activities in light of the coronavirus progress and updates.

Implementation Profile before the COVID-19 pandemic: 

Girls’ sports tournaments were gradually getting institutionalized as a sustainable process in the target schools of Kabul city. However, insecurity and lack of financial resources were remained as key challenges. Basketball was added to the series of competitions in spring – summer round of 2018 and fortunately, CPD was able to continue the competitions in both the fields (volleyball and basketball) in the autumn round of 2018 as well. Luckily, a boys’ futsal tournament was also organized in autumn 2018 aimed at prevention of Gender Based Violence and using the hashtag #HeforShe. Inclusion of male members of communities has been proved effective in fighting street harassment and fighting to ensure the very basic right of women and girls to access public spaces, recreation, edutainment and assembly. 

In spring 2019, sporadic sports matches were organized in numerous schools of Kabul city, but organized tournaments did not happen mainly due to security concerns. In 2019, we were planning dynamic activities for 2020 and were enthusiastically looking forward to implement our planned activities to get momentum to the already started initiatives. We were thrilled to launch said well-planned initiative, but coronavirus arrival prevented the implementation.  

Links:

• Official Facebook page of the CPD
• Official Twitter account of the CPD
• Official Instagram account of the CPD