Educate & Give voice to HODI Girls in North Kenya

"I was so shy at first," she says, "but after some time football changed me. For several years parents did not support girls playing football but in the future, when I'm a mother, I want to support girls playing football."

Ms. Gufu, 14, is the deputy president at her school. She's been brought up by a single mother in a poor family where she is the only girl. She says that "football has changed her life." While Hodi's numbers are impressive, it's seeing our work at play in the lives of individual girls that really illustrates how innovative HODIs approach is transforming lives. The local approach is paying off this included the traditional elders and local imams. After consulting imams on how we could design a football strip modest enough for many of the Muslim girls who want to play, HODI now runs a girl's team in a madrassa, an Islamic school.

It is hard so we still don't believe that we are alive to see that happen. While both FGM and child marriages are illegal in Kenya, local cultures are strong and traditions persist. Our organisation HODI has had to work hard both to argue against these cultures and to work with them. Without all your support it would not have been possible. It would have just remained as a pipe dream. Her approach, called Breaking the Silence, has led to 1,645 girls from 152 villages in the Marsabit region of Kenya playing football over the last 10 years.

Empowering the children to stand up for themselves, by making them more confident and capable on the football pitch, has been a big part of our mission, especially in an area where traditional family and tribal structures mean that children and women often don't have a voice. But despite the challenges Ms Gufu and many more girls like her are making it to the play ground making the numbers to rise from initial 12 to 1,645 girls. We shall be giving un update of the young girl as she rises to be a star in future.

Links:

• The HODI Website
• The HODI Website