Sports have been increasingly looked upon as a new medium for social change. They not only generate mass interest, but also work out to be an important tool for building confidence and overcoming mental inhibitions. Many NGOs and projects around the world are experimenting with this concept and have found some very good results.
One such example is the Street Child World Cup in South Africa especially at a time when the world will turn around to this country for the 2010 FIFA World Cup. The Street Child World Cup is actually a football competition of street children but it will also have girls playing shoulder-to-shoulder with boys. According to the video below, girls who have been through a life of poverty, abuse and neglect since an early age have now developed a new-found confidence after playing with boys on the same pitch. One of the important rules of this competition is that each national team should include at least one girl player and these girl players are being trained to participate in it and also become aware about their rights through workshops organized by Plan International.
It enhances their sense of equality and enables them to feel empowered and respond to the challenges they face. One of the benefiting girls in the video, now part of the program, explains how street girls were not even able to steal money like the boys because they were girls and to run a living, they had to sell their bodies. Now many of them are part of the soccer game, competing and challenging against boys.
