Prishtina – Girls are playing in the field and boys are supporting and cheering for them (being fans). This is the newest activity that “Klubi Bonu Burre” (Be a Man Club) has organized, a football tournament for girls.
The idea is to promote gender equality and to show to our society that girls are equal to boys. KBB has organized this tournament with the title “Who said girls can’t” to prove that girls can play football and are able to do many things, but it is our society that needs to give them a chance and believe in gender equality and be open.
The great thing about this initiative was that from the beginning, when we announced this tournament at the school “28 Nentori” (where Young Men Initiative project is being implemented), in 3 weeks time we had 15 teams with 6 girls in each team that requested to be part of the girl’s tournament, so this showed and proved that they were really eager for such a chance, but so far nobody had offered it to them. For a start we organized the tournament only for 8 teams which took one day for all of them to play. The rest of the teams are on the waiting list, and once the weather improves we will continue with the rest of the teams.
This tournament brought a lot of joy to the boys who were cheering all the time, they seem to have changed even more their views towards the girls from the school and towards their friendship because of this activity, trust and fun seem to have gone deeper and more meaningful. On the other hand, girls as well send many thanks to PEN and to their friends (young men), they are showing as well more interest every day and contacting PEN offering their support needed for the project.
The tournament was followed by national TV station that showed the tournament for 15 minutes and school principal together with vice-principal and other professors watched this on TV and they were very proud that it was their school on TV that started to break these prejudices about girls, and they are hoping that such initiative continues and the message gets more spread in other schools as well.
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