Our time is now—our rights, our future! This is the theme for this year’s International Day of the Girl Child. It will mark 10 years since this special day was incorporated into the United Nation’s annual calendar as a way of emphasizing the essence of safeguarding our girls socially and economically.

“In these last 10 years, there has been increased attention on issues that matter to girls amongst governments, policymakers, and the general public, and more opportunities for girls to have their voices heard on the global stage,” cites UNICEF.

It adds that the world’s 600 million adolescent girls have shown that given the skills and the opportunities, they can be the change-makers driving progress in their communities, building back stronger for all, including women, boys, and men.

“Girls are ready for a decade of acceleration forward. It is time for us all to stand accountable – with and for girls – and to invest in a future that believes in their agency, leadership and potential,” cites UNICEF.

This is evident in Kenya where a tremendous effort towards the social and economic betterment of the girl child is being innovatively spearheaded by the Moving the Goalposts (MTG). This is a women’s rights and sport for development organization that was started in 2002 in Kilifi, in the rural Coast region of Kenya.

Over the last 20 years, MTG has engaged over 30,000 adolescent girls and young women aged 9 to 25 years from rural and informal settlements in this region. “We have been engaging adolescent girls and young women through football as a tool to help them develop leadership skills,” cites MTG.

Lydia Kasiwa is one of the beneficiaries of the MTG empowerment programs for girls. She joined MTG at the age of 18, immediately after High School.

Today, she sits on MTG Management Team as the Football and Community Engagement Coordinator. Before joining MTG Football and Community Engagement Coordinator, Kasiwa’s future looked bleak. She had lost both her parents and was living with her sisters and stepmother.

The only next natural step after doing her KCSE was to find employment by doing domestic work. “I didn’t see any future ahead. I would then get married, fall pregnant and that would be it for me,” she says. After joining MTG, she was trained as a referee and peer educator.

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This gave her the opportunity to reach out to other girls and visit other schools in her community. Within a few years, she was employed as the MTG Health Coordinator and later rose to become the Leadership Development Coordinator.

“MTG nurtured and changed my life completely. After joining MTG, I went to university, did my diploma, and did my degree. It would have been a totally different story for me if I hadn’t joined MTG,” she says.

Esse Mbeyu Akida is the other of the more than 9,000 young women who have gone through the MTG program. She joined MTG in 2001 and started playing for MTG United Team in the National Women’s league while in secondary school.

She later joined Spedag, a football club in Mombasa. MTG provided University Scholarship for Esse at the Methodist University in Nairobi because her parents were not able to pay her tuition fee. Esse played for the University football team and was thereafter called to be part of The Kenya National Women’s Football team popularly known as Harambee Starlets in 2015.

Today, she plays professional football in Greece with PAOK Club. Esse is also a recipient of the top scorer award COTIF Women’s Football Tournament in Valencia, Spain. In 2016, Esse was feted as a youth champion by Kilifi County. She was the first-ever young woman to receive that award.

According to MTG’ Dorcas Amakobe, the improvement of girls in the region through soccer and education scholarships has been greatly fueled by the ‘Tuinuane‘ partnership that MTG has formed with Safaricom.

“Safaricom has greatly impacted our program. They have invested in our infrastructure, helped us construct a community resource center and library and equipped it with books,” she says.

This has enabled over 4,000 girls and boys from very poor community to access revision and reading materials in the facilities.

“One of our MTG girls from Kwale, in Mwangaza Field is now studying in a UK University after securing an M-PESA Foundation scholarship,” says Amakobe.

“She is an inspiration to many girls and her siblings. Her mother has also become a champion for girls leadership and helping other parents to value girls education.”

Under the Safaricom and MTG soccer program, the girls receive training and leadership opportunities to organize and run football activities, peer education programs on sexual and reproductive health, women’s rights, and economic empowerment.

“We provide pathways and resources for girls to continue in education, vocational training and to find income generating activities or employment, including opportunities within the organization.”

This program targets disenfranchised girls from four counties that are ranked among the poorest. These include Kilifi, Kwale, Tana River, and the informal settlements of Mombasa. In these counties, over 50 percent of adolescent girls are not in education, employment and training and live in absolute poverty.

With low to zero chances of education, many girls in this region have had to contend with early marriages. “We have found that most of these girls are exposed to a higher risk of contracting HIV and other sexually transmitted infections, and early pregnancy and pregnancy complications. They have poor sexual reproductive health education and a glaring inability to negotiate contraception use,” states MTG.

As the girls become pregnant, their financial dependence on husbands increases. This results in the fear of destitution which forces many of them to silently endure gender-based violence, widow inheritance and wife battering, which have been found to be prevalent in the region.

In an effort to safeguard young girls in the region, MTG has established 51 secure, safe spaces and fields where girls and young women play football and train on leadership.

Interestingly, MTG has gone a step further to rescue the future of girls who fall pregnant at a young age. “We have been working to see girls return to schools after delivering, or take up entrepreneurial activities to sustain themselves and their families,” says MTG.

In 2019 alone, 422 girls took up leadership roles as coaches, referees, and safe-guarders. 20 per cent of these participants have since secured employment, 30 per cent run viable businesses, and many others are now active in their communities including in competing for elective positions.

To sustain its empowerment drive, MTG has formed strategic collaborations with local, national and international partners. These include the Kilifi Gender Stakeholders Forum, Pwani Feminists Community Network, Reproductive Health Network Kenya, Sexual Gender-Based Violence Network, Family Planning Network, and Adolescent Sexual and Reproductive Health Network. Nationally, MTG has been working with the Kenyan Football Federation, the Kenyan Refereeing Association and the Kenyan Coaches Association.

It also has running programs that have been getting support from the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Education. MTG also has international partnerships with the African Coalition on Menstrual Health Management whose common goal is to provide prominent platforms for advocacy on girls’ and women’s rights.