Girls swap rice paddies for soccer fields in India, and escape the cycle of child marriage and poverty
- Without soccer they would likely have been child brides, or risked being trafficked for sex work; through it some left their villages to train in US and Spain
- Their soccer lessons are provided by an NGO, founded by an American, which also schools them in Hindi and English – and teaches them to stand out
From working in rice fields in a remote village in Jharkhand, one of the poorest states in India, to undergoing two weeks of advanced soccer training at the Real Sociedad club in San Sebastian, Spain, 17-year-old Kusum Kumari has come a long way. Today she is a girls’ soccer coach.
Rinky Kumari, 18, and Monika Kumari, 17, from the same village, Hutup (where all unmarried women share the same surname, which means “maiden”), have had similar exceptional journeys. Recently, Rinky took part in the Michael Johnson Young Leaders programme, in Dallas, Texas – a world away from home, and her illiterate mother and alcoholic father. Monika, the daughter of a security guard, took part in a two-week mountaineering expedition to Mount Baker in Washington state, organised by the University of Oregon.
Yuwa (which means “youth” in the Hindi language) is the brainchild of Franz Gastler, from the Midwestern US state of Minnesota, who visited India as a business consultant in 2007. A year later, he joined an NGO and started teaching English to village children.
“I wanted to combat child marriage and illiteracy among girls,” says Gastler, now 38. “They are denied a future, simply because of their gender.”