WHM Special: Moving the Goalposts Address Sport’s Role in Gender Equality
March 19, 2021
In honour of March’s Women’s History Month, we are checking in with the 2020 Sport for Gender Equality Collective Impact Award winners. Today, we feature Dorcas Amakobe, Executive Director of Moving the Goalposts (MTG) in Kilifi, Kenya, who spoke with us about empowering girls to become leaders, being a leader herself and what it’s been like to collaborate with the other Collective Impact winners so far.
MTG believes that football has the unique power to unlock the potential of disadvantaged girls and young women, helping them to become leaders and create better futures for themselves. The organization creates safe spaces for them to understand and claim their rights, take up leadership roles and have a voice in society. Since its founding, MTG has worked with over 30,000 adolescent girls and young women aged 9-25 years from rural and informal settlements in the coastal region.
The organization asserts that the essentials for success in the game (team work, fair play, acceptance of winning and losing) foster attitudes that promote integrity, honesty, responsibility and transparency. As a tool of transformation, football for girls is therefore central to their approach, strategies and interventions. MTG trains 400 girls annually to be leaders on and off the pitch and girls lead all their programs.
“Before we started our program, sporting grounds were regarded as spaces for men. Moving the Goalposts has changed this. In many communities we work with women and girls who now have equal access to playgrounds and in certain communities these women dominate,” said Dorcas.
“Growing up I was told that women should lead quietly, you must be gentle and make sure that you don't step on people when leading them. I never heard this being told to boys and men in my community."
MTG has deliberately kept women in leadership positions to model its mantra that girls can lead themselves. They have the girls and women address and set up public events and teach them not to second guess themselves. Boys and adults in the community aren’t allowed to deliver sessions to their girls, which makes the girls step up. “When men are watching, and the community has actually said women cannot be leaders, we show in this community that women actually can.”
Dorcas shared that leading during the COVID19 pandemic - with everyone listening and relying on every single word and looking to her for solutions - was the most difficult time in her personal leadership journey. To get through it, she relied on her team. “Like in any team sport, I like to lead as a team captain, spending significant time to learn and have an understanding of each member of my team - their strengths weaknesses, attitude and how each of this affect every outcome.”
Working with MTG, its programs and the girls has allowed Dorcas to appreciate her leadership journey as a woman. “I have learnt to put myself out there so that others can learn from me in order to pay it forward. I believe that exponential growth as a leader may not take the form of a smooth upward curve, it can sometimes take the form of a slope downwards or upwards and every moment is worth learning from and sharing with others.”
Supported by Comic Relief and the BT Supporters Club, the four Collective Impact Award winners - from across East and Southern Africa - were selected to work together over one year. They are benefitting from each other’s individual expertise, sharing best practices and working through issues in real-time to drive real, sustainable impact through sport. This year kicked off the group workshops facilitated by our sister consultancy, thinkBeyond.
Dorcas feels that the workshops have enabled her to learn innovative approaches by engaging partners and beneficiaries through online platforms. “I have been able to appreciate the power of collaboration and shared learning. I am happy that our cohort has very similar issues that are affecting our work and we believe that we will come up with joint learning, which will enable us to share with other sport for development organizations.”
Through the Gender Assessment Tool used during the workshops, Dorcas has seen that it’s important to be objective when assessing your own organization and that when you fail to recognize the gaps and areas that require more work, the chances of moving gender equality ideals forward are very slim.
In the future, she hopes so see and read about MTG beneficiaries creating change in various sectors in our society as leaders. “I would like to see girls in our program and sport for development communities grow and learn through doing. I would like to hear about innovation in the area of sport for change that enables girls to be able to express themselves and utilize opportunities in their communities.”
Watch Dorcas’ 2020 Beyond Sport Global Awards Campaign interview with Sports Anchor and Presenter Motshidisi Mohono here.