Kick and learn

A Jharkhand-based NGO is giving girls a chance to build a school for themselves, one football kick at a time

I dream of a school that is big, clean and green, with large windows that let in natural light," says Asha Kumari. "My dream school has lots of classrooms and is known all over the country," says Radha Kumari. As of now, there's wide disparity between their reality and dreams. The two adolescents from Hutup, a tiny village in Jharkhand, go to a tiny school with infrastructure typical of rural schools. What is more, the lease for the land that the school is built on is going to expire in six months. Then the girls may have no school at all. But Radha and Asha are no ordinary village girls. Because of the efforts of a grassroots NGO, Yuwa, they play football and together with their team, have become the faces of a unique social media campaign, "Kick For A Brick", sponsored by Lenovo. The campaign gives them the hope of crowdfunding money to build their own school.

The heart of the campaign has been the Yuwa team's participation in the prestigious youth football tournament, the Donosti Cup held this month in Spain. With support from sponsors such as Lenovo and Bookasmile, the Jharkhand girls participated in the tournament and raised funds and awareness for their school. They spoke eloquently in public forums, and spiked an interest in the Kick for a Brick campaign, which urges people to express solidarity with the Yuwa girls by uploading videos of them playing football on the campaign's social media platforms. Every "kick" curated on social media translates to a brick for the Yuwa school. Even competing teams at the Donosti Cup supported their campaign, impressed by the fortitude and resolve of the rural football team.

Not only did the campaign trend on Twitter in July, but it also spawned several individual crowdfunding initiatives on platforms such as Ketto (one of them has already raised over Rs 1.3 lakh with 41 backers this month). Lenovo also sponsored a docudrama on the journey of the Yuwa football team with Bollywood star Ranbir Kapoor and ace footballer Sunil Chhetri.

As fundraising goes, this could arguably be a first among Indian NGOs, most of who find raising funds a challenge. "Much of it has come about because these girls are so inspiring," says Franz Gastler, the dynamic young founder of Yuwa. When he arrived in this village, he didn't play football. However, when a group of girls wanted to play the game, he helped them form a team. "Initially, my plan was to start some scholarships with a group of friends for some of the village girls," recounts Gastler. But he found that the girls from the football team had become regular students compared to the ones on scholarship. "This is how I thought of using team sport to enable these girls to transform their lives," he says.

With a membership of 250 (of which 150 train every day), Yuwa offers hope for girls - traditionally the most disempowered in a state where six out of 10 girls drop out of school to become child brides and thousands are trafficked every year - to script their own future. When a girl organises or joins a Yuwa team, positive peer pressure helps her become a better student, keep track of her and her teammates' health and most important, dream of a brighter future. Their school, even though it has little infrastructure, has also been painted by the Yuwa brush. There is a small but dedicated corpus of teachers, but the girls also use online resources such as the Khan Academy. Every student learns what she can and teaches what she can. Asha (15) and Radha (14) are in the football team, for instance, but also coach the junior team.

Over 600 girls have been members of Yuwa so far. As one of them, Kusum, said in her 2013 TEDx talk, the opportunities they have received through football and Yuwa have made them realise it is cool to be ambitious and to set hard goals for themselves.

Today, it seems almost audacious for these girls from one of India's most disempowered states to want to build their own school. But their quiet confidence and optimism makes one believe that they will definitely achieve their goal - brick by brick and kick by kick.

Find out more at www.yuwa-india.org
Next fortnight, the story of a trust that has constructed 200 check dams in some of Rajasthan's driest villages