Hi Magdy,
It is great to read about your work on Changemakers and to read all the comments and responses from around the world. Ever since I met you last year at the Gender Equity in Sport for Social Change conference in Casablanca I have been inspired by your work. Women Win will be co-organizing the conference again this May and I hope to be able to see you again.

I like that you have added a YouTube video on this page. You mention a very important fact which is that most funding agencies do not prioritize sport as a valuable tool for social change and empowerment. Maybe those of us who do know and understand the power of sport need to find ways to leverage more funding for the empowerment of girls and women through sport. Video and internet can be a very powerful medium to do this. Maybe we can discuss a strategy to join forces in this area and see how to raise more funding and support? All the best with your work,
Astrid Aafjes
Women Win
www.womenwin.org

Kevin Carroll
Changemakers Featured Commentator
Sport for a Better World Competition

Marginalizing play for anyone is absolutely detrimental to the development of the person as well as the society that is implementing such practices. The National Institute for Play (www.ni4p.org) has tremendous research on what play deprivation can do to a person & a culture. I think it would be advantageous for you to speak with other organizations that started programs for young ladies at the grassroots level such as the Global Youth Partnership for Africa (www.gypafrica.org) and ask about some of the best practices and programs they have created on behalf of the girls and young ladies in Uganda (example: "Girls Kick-It").

Changing opinion about the value of sport for the young ladies in your schools/community is not going to be easy but all movements require someone with initiative and vision and persistence - I commend you for having those traits. Keep up your efforts and seek out advice from others who have gone down a similar path!

Dear Magdy,

It sounds like you have created a great network of partners. Is this network going to help you creating a pathway from school level to club level? In other words, are you intending to give opportunities to the girls to fully express and develop their talents or do you aim to only focus on the phase of involving more girls in the sport? Secondly, how are you cooperating with the partners in the organization of the capacity building?

We can imagine that it is very challenging to convince parents of the girls to let their daughters join sport classes and especially those led by male advisors. How do you deal with this problem? Do you try to directly educate them or do you expect that the achievements of the girl child are sufficient to indirectly change their attitudes?

We are looking forward to your answers and wish you all the best for the project.

Pierre and Steffi

Hi Magdy
That is great you are working with the university and colleges to get trained coaches. What sort of issues do you have about the girls playing in public? For example with our project we had to put foil up on the gym windows so that the girls would not be seen by neighbourhood boys while they were training. Do you have to take any steps to adapt training so that the parents feel it is an acceptable environment for their daughters (rules of modesty). What sort of arguments do you find work with parents in order to convince them to allow their daughters to take part?

Thanks!
hc

Dear Heather Cameron
It was a pleasure for me to meet you in Morocco in the spring of 2007,In response to your question:
In The first phase we provided training to men and women to spread and exercise the game and to gain the confidence of community and the Foundation in the idea
As in the game of football strategy will be different in that we are making now interviews with qualified girls graduates from the College of Physical Education and practicing the game of football to qualify them to be coaches for the next phase of work with schools.

Regards

Magdy Aziz

Wycliffe Mboya Ngoya
CEO and the Director
Sacrena Sporting Organization
P.O.Box 138-40123
Kisumu-Kenya
Tel:+254 724 799 727
email:sacrenakenya@yahoo.com
email:wycliffemboya@yahoo.com
skype name:sacrenakenya

We do indeed have more comments and questions for you!

We would love to know how you see a project like your working in other Islamic communities or countries, do you think that perhaps partnering with others in other countries that this could be a tangible goal?

Also, given more resources, what would you do to leverage the power of sports, volleyball and now soccer, to help women in other areas of their life? Do you see any other broader social impacts that could be outlined?

Thank you in advance for your response! And I hope as we flush out these ideas that you will incorporate them into your entry so that we have the best possible entry in time for judging.

Best regards,

Tyler Ahn
Changemakers

Hi Magdy
Congrats on your work with girls and young women in Egypt. I work with girls in Germany and Kenya and in Germany we work with many Moslem girls. Do you need to provide a women only training in order to meet parents' expectations? Do you therefore need to recruit and train young women as coaches? If so it would be great to hear about some of your strategies for recruiting coaches. If you work with men as coaches, perhaps you can say how that has worked and what advice you would give others about involving male coaches in girls and women's sports programmes.

Thanks, Greetings from Berlin!
Heather Cameron
boxgirls.de

I'm sure that the work of the Tanweer Foundadtion has been very courageous and influential in Northern Egypt, Magdy. Two questions came to mind for me as I read your proposal and watched the video: To what extent do the girls' parents support what you do on behalf of their daughters? And does this perspective change depending on whether it's the fathers or the mothers that we're talking about? That is, are mothers more inclined to embrace the concept of athletic training for their daughters? Or are fathers? Or do you find that it doesn't break down along these sex lines at all?

Steve Byars

Dear Tyler Ahn:
Thank you for your comment ,I am happy to answer your questions:
1-I will continue in the same schools but will change the type of sport from volleyball to soccer and it is the first time for girls to practice soccer so there will be two groups of girls that we work with them inside schools.
2- Yes I have a plan to do this ,to acquire skills for supervisors on this new sport for them and the plan will include Training Course will be followed by 55 competitions among 400 girls in women soccer team.
3- the added value from project to community aside from what you mentioned is to fight a domain trend in community which calls to marginalize women from her young age especially we work in Upper Egypt to empower women.
4-Supervisors will be women and men.
I am ready to any other comments

Regards

Magdy Aziz

Hi Magdy,

I think it is a wonderful initiative to bring sports to girls. You mention the same things in how you would implement your innovation and also how you would grow your innovation. I would like to know a couple of things - do you plan on expanding this to other schools in the region and do you have plans for how you would do that and also, aside from the usual benefits such as self-esteem, health and team work that children learn from sports, what other changes do you hope to see in your region as a result of this program? More gender equality? Empowered women? The athletic supervisors, are they also women?

Thank you for your response!

Tyler Ahn
Changemakers