With our leadership program for girls in Zambia and Germany we want to create safe spaces for girls and use sport for development activities to strengthen leadership competences and prepare them to take over leadership positions in their sport teams, their sport clubs or communities.
Females have commonly and traditionally been significantly underrepresented in leadership and decision-making at all levels in sport and across local, regional, national and international sporting bodies (Women on Boards 2016). Structures and gender-based discrimination in the sport environment poses many barriers for women and girls to take over leadership positions at all levels. But not only structures hold girls and women back from progressing. Adolescent girls tend to have lower self-esteem and more negative assessments of their physical characteristics and intellectual abilities than boys have. In this context sport can be used to strengthen their self-esteem and empower them to develop a positive picture of themselves.
Specific issues girls face in their country context:
- lack of opportunities to be enrolled in sport activities
- lack of opportunities to develop leadership competences
- existing gender norms in the communities that holds the girls back to take over leadership positions (girls are not supposed to do sports, take leading positions)
- lack of female role models in sports
- lack of goals for their future
- lack of safe sports environments (fear of being harrassed, sexual abused)
AIMS & OBJECTIVES
Overall Objective: To address current gender inequalities in the sport environment through strengthening girl`s leadership competences such as self-confidence and trust, responsibility, resilience, communication and decision-making using a sport and activity-based program.
Specific Objective: To carry out a leadership program for 10-15 girls in Zambia and Germany as an extracurricular activity within the already existing sport activities of the organisations to strengthen leadership competences and enabling the girls to take leading positions in their own sport team, sport club or their community.
To strengthen the girl´s leadership competences we want to use a sport and activity-based approach. The main focus will be on sport for development activities. These activities aim to use sport as a tool to intentionally strengthen the five identified leadership competences. The competency level will be addressed in three steps during the reflection after each activity.
The five identified leadership competences for the activities are:
- Self-confidence and Trust
Besides focussing on the competence development through sport for development activities, leadership development requires a multifaceted approach. Therefore we will also conduct three workshops where the girls will be able to experience different stages of their leadership development in a process of experiential learning. To cultivate leadership in young people it is necessary to provide space for them. Especially for girls it has to be a safe space where they feel they can open up and be themselves. “Nothing about us, without us” is one of the main principles of the program.