GIRLS IN ACTION CONDUCTS LEADERSHIP AND CAPACITY BUILDING WORKSHOPS TO EMPOWER WOMEN AND GIRLS IN LIVINGSTONE AND KABWE

Sport In Action recognizes the importance of providing women and girls with the skills and confidence required to become leaders in their communities. In most Zambian Societies, Women have been labeled as the weaker sex and most families have a pro-son biasness. Consequently, they tend to be less invested in their daughters’ human capital, particularly in terms of career-oriented skill development. Hence, women become disadvantaged when it comes to joining productive workforces.

Through its Girls In Action Program, Sport In Action aims at challenging societal and cultural norms by providing leadership training to girls who will then pursue leadership opportunities and achieve remarkable success. Sport In Action has also made it a priority to promote the prevention of violence against women and girls by building decision making skills in its young Ambassadors.

Girls In Action is a girls focused program that uses sport and recreation activities as a tool to empower and educate young girls with information on various topics such as ending teenage pregnancy, ending child marriages, HIV/AIDs e.t.c. The major Objective of the program is to engage and empower young girls to be self-assertive and build on their self-esteem to enhance their decision making skills.

With these objectives in mind, in this month of May, the Girls In Action team conducted 3 days’ workshops in Kabwe and Livingstone town. The leadership training workshop in Kabwe started on 5th May, 2021 and ended on 7th May, 2021. 20 Girls In Action Ambassadors participated in the training which was held at Hope of Glory.

In Livingstone, the 20 Ambassadors were trained between 9th to 11th May, 2021 at the former District Education Board Secretary’s (DEBS) Office. The aim of these workshops was to promote capacity building in facilitation and session delivery. Related topics discussed at the workshop included: Identifying Violence against women and girls, Sexual Violence against Children, understanding power and power imbalances that may lead to HIV/AIDS, providing awareness on teenage pregnancy amongst young girls and facilitation and communication skills using the SASA methodology, which is a skills building tool for leaders. In this methodology, trained leaders come together to prevent violence against women and HIV through the process of community mobilization. This methodology was used to assist the young girls in starting to provide awareness to their communities, give support to other girls they will have safe spaces with and action on key issues that affect them.

The Girls In Action Team, with the support of Sport In Action and its partners, hopes to conduct more of these workshops to help shape the future of the female population in the country.