Transform a Girl's Life Through Soccer

Girls have been playing soccer through the summer and fall. In June and July 2022, through our partnership with Plan International, Ladies’ Turn led 8 practices to teach girls different soccer skills and techniques for 34 middle school and high school girls’ teams. Then over four weekends, the girls’ teams played in soccer tournaments of a series of rapid 10-minute games throughout the day.

We are very proud of our work in Thies with Plan International. We started with 20 school teams and then things went so well that Plan International asked us to expand our work to 14 more teams. In June and July, over 550 girls played soccer with us, and 128 boys helped out with the tournaments. On September 10, we held a ceremony to closeout our partnership with Plan International and celebrate all that had been accomplished.

In September, we also organized 3 afternoons of “street soccer” for neighborhood teams in two areas of Thies- Keur Moussa and Fandème. This goes back to our roots as an organization where we started some of the first neighborhood soccer teams for girls and organized soccer tournaments on community fields so everyone would see girls playing. It was a lot of fun to get back out in the street.

Finally on October 12, 2022, we organized a large event for the International Day of the Girl Child (which is actually on October 11^th but the 12^th was a Wednesday and easier to organize events in the afternoon). We organized a soccer tournament and also a track meet. We brought together boys and girls to celebrate the day, and over 500 youth participated. Check out this news report and this one!

We hope you’ve also had a great summer and fall. As always, thank you so much for your generous support that makes girls’ soccer in Senegal possible!

Nio far, In Solidarity,

Jennifer and the Ladies’ Turn Team