SALT Mighty Girls Program
This project's parent organization is SALT (Sport and Leadership Training) Academy
It operates in Cambodia
It uses Football (Soccer)
Entered the Sport for Education Award
More about SALT Mighty Girls Program
The Mighty Girls project primarily addresses gender inequality, particularly targeting sports representation. Traditionally, girls in Cambodia are not encouraged or even allowed to participate in or attend athletic events. This goes further than participation in sports however, and girls are very often taken out of school so they can work and contribute to the household income from an early age instead. In this sense, football in the framework of our programs is both a tool and a forum. It is a tool because we combine football training with mainstream and vocational education to increase girls’ capacity as individuals. We also use football as a forum to challenge traditional gender roles: we teach boys that girls can do everything they do, and we show girls that they do not have to see boys as a threat. Finally, we use football as a springboard to introduce the girls to the rest of the world, for example by participating in exchange programs and tournaments abroad, so that they can learn about different ways to conceptualize gender inequality.