Transform a Girl's Life Through Soccer

Ladies’ Turn has a new program “Alley-Oop” working with three soccer academies in Senegal on girls’ soccer programs. We’re really excited because two of the academies were just opened by two former players on Senegalese national women’s soccer team. The two national team alumni each wanted to start a soccer academy dedicated solely to girls. Their motivation stemmed from the fact that while more than 1,000 soccer academies operate in Senegal to teach boys to play, they usually do not include girls. Ladies’ Turn is helping the two girls’ soccer academies, Souky Academy in Rufisque neighborhood of Dakar and Hope and Sport Academy in Toubab Dialow down the coast from Dakar, get off the ground.

The third soccer academy, Mama Sport, is located in the Yoff neighborhood of Dakar and is one of the traditional academies that just works with boys. “Mama” is actually the first name of the man who founded it. Ladies’ Turn is helping Mama Sport pilot including girls in the hope that Mama Sport develops a permanent girls’ program.

Ladies’ Turn brought 50 girls from the two girls only academies and 30 from Mama Sport, 130 girls total, to the Senegalese Soccer Federation’s training center, Centre Francois Baconde, in Toubab Dialow. Ladies’ Turn also included 20 boys from Mama Sport to demonstrate how girls can integrate into their soccer programs and to increase boys’ acceptance of girls playing soccer. At the center, Ladies’ Turn led soccer clinics to teach basic soccer skills and organized “soccer festivals” or mini soccer tournaments. Ladies’ Turn also organized activities at each of the academies to help them launch girls’ programs in their own space. In total, Ladies’ Turn organized 6 days of soccer clinics and 2 tournaments. Additionally, Ladies’ Turn also used Alley-Oop’s curriculum which includes 10 activity kits that expose youth to important topics. For example, Ladies’ Turn showed videos on inclusion in sports and gender-based violence and then led discussions with the girls and boys on each theme.

Through this program, it’s been very inspiring to see alumni from the national team move into new leadership roles in soccer helping the next generation play. With Mama Sport, the co-ed activities went well so we’re excited to see what Mama Sport does with this new experience. We’re grateful to Alley-Oop Africa for making this collaboration possible.

We’re also thankful to La Guilde and Decathlon for their support during the upcoming school year of our program that started the first sports programs for girls in primary schools (sports equals soccer in our case!). If you missed it, check out our launch and a spring semester update  on this gender equality initiative in primary schools: You’ll fall in love with the pictures (and the initiative)!

We’re also grateful to all of you for your support which lets us pilot new programs, build our organization, and cover crucial costs that other donors do not cover. This is how our sports equality program in primary schools was born.

A new year of soccer in girls’ primary schools in Yoff starts now. Stay tuned!

Nio Far, In Solidarity,

Jennifer and the Ladies' Turn Team