ENGAGE Through Sports

Enabling Girls Advance Gender Equity (ENGAGE) through sports project is being implemented in partnership with Centre for Youth Development and Transformation (CYDT) with funding from Comic Relief. It is a 2 years’ project from May 2021 to April 2023 being implemented in Blantyre urban and rural areas. The project seeks to challenge the sociocultural and gender-based norms and harmful practices that influence and negatively affect the well-being of adolescent girls through use of cycling sport. Through the use of sports, 350 adolescent girls and young women aged 10-24 years will play, learn and develop cycling skills for physical and emotional well-being to achieve independence and thrive. The project is empowering adolescent girls to enjoy their rights in an equitable society where there are no limits, no stereotypes and no impossibilities for them to reach to their fullest potential. The project is also targeting 100 boys using a gender transformative model to engage boys and men to build their capacity and knowledge to support and promote girls’ rights and gender equality.

Through this project, girls are being empowered to improve their life skills, agency and to be able to take charge of decisions that affect their lives. Girls are taking risks with their bodies and are positively changing the way they present themselves. This has enhanced girls’ self-image and has also influenced change in communities’ perceptions and attitudes that sees girls as less capable and second class citizens to girls who have full potential. This is being achieved through the use of girls’ clubs where weekly sessions are delivered using Integrated Sport and Life skills curriculum. The project uses cycling sport as a tool for Social Transformation to address the barriers and challenges that girls face in their communities.