Leyla Rennt: Girls sports fest celebrates multi culti city life in girls led activities
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>View discussions about this entry Country: Germany
Organization: Seitenwechsel Berlin
Sport: Other
Year the initative began (yyyy) 2002
Project URL: www.leyla-rennt.de
Positioning in the Mosaic of solutions
What is your signature innovation, your new idea, in one sentence? Showcase girls sports in urban multi cultural sports festival to gain critical mass and show good programmes.
Describe your innovation. What makes your idea unique and different than others doing work in the field? Leyla Rennt brings girls from all over the city to a central sports festival for girls of all social groups, cultures, religions and languages. Girls neighbourhood projects come to check out the action. Sport clubs come and showcase their sport discipline through workshops with the girls and a fun competition. They also network and learn from other clubs active in girls sports. It also presents an opportunity for press coverage of girls sports event.
Leyla Rennt takes place on a prominent sports facility where passersby can see the activities and the girls get to take over some highly valued public space. They feel special and they should. Leyla Rennt shows how girls love sport when it is presented in a girl friendly way. We use Leyla Rennt as a way to show politicians, the press, parents and other clubs how girls sport can work. What are the existing barriers, the biggest problem, your innovation is hoping to address/change? School takes up a lot of a girl’s time in Berlin. We need to encourage more schools to take part. While we enjoy the support of some schools, others need to be convinced. If we could convince more of the value of girls sport it would help the festival. Some sports clubs in Berlin do not believe that girls want to do sports and so do very little outreach. Leyla Rennt allows them to take part in a success and learn from peers how to attract and retain girl members.
Delivery Model: How do you implement your innovation and apply it to the challenge/problem you are addressing? Leyla Rennt organises 2 major events a year in Berlin and a series of smaller park festivals in many neighbourhoods. Leyla Rennt committee speaks with new clubs, policy makers and neighbourhood schools to build support for the goals and sustainability of Leyla Rennt.
How do you plan to grow your innovation? We would like to grow the amount of girls who come to the big events and then help other cities host similar festivals based on our model. We do not want to franchise the model, but instead share our experience with other women’s projects also aware of the value of sport in a girl’s life. We have initiated contact with Paris, France
Provide one sentence describing your impact/intended impact. Fun sport days drive girls into neighbourhood clubs and encourage better connection between girls sport clubs
What impact has your innovation had to date/or what is your intended impact? Exactly who are the beneficiaries? The discussion around girls sport in our home neighbourhood of Kreuzberg has improved dramatically since we started. There is a wider awareness of girls sport, there are a lot of press reports (please see links), more girls activities on offer, greater participation at Leyla Rennt itself.
Please list any other measures reflective of the impact of your innovation? Inclusion in the Madchen Starken (Strengthening Girls) Programme of the DKJS. The municipal government has supported us for three years. We won a stern des sports. We were identified as a best practice example for the United through Sports national competition.
What are the main barriers to creating or achieving your impact? -- Difficulty reaching girls in more conservative households
- Smaller amount of time with the girls to encourage them to take up sport - People who are against girls only activities - Schools who do not want to work with sports clubs - Time required to convince the sceptical - Difficulty providing sport in very socially disadvantaged area. How is your initiative financed (or how do you expect your initiative will be financed)? Leyla rennt is paid for by the members of Seitenwechsel e.V., through the Landessportbund programme Integration through Sport and through funding from DKJS MaedchenStaerken programme.
If known, provide information on your finances and organization. Volunteer board, 1 paid staff and 2 hourly paid staff, many volunteers
What is the potential demand for your innovation? Leyla Rennt programmes could run in all the major cities of Germany and then Europe.
What are the main barriers to financial sustainability? We are financially secure. We need more volunteers and the time to consistently develop girl leaders. We also need to find the leaders in other cities to drive the project with equal passion.
What is the origin of this innovation? Tell us your story. Our club was providing sports opportunities for women in the Berlin district of kreuzberg. We wanted to do more for the neighbourhood gilrs who were not offered many girl friendly opportunities for sport. In addition the living situation for many neighbourhood families was very difficult making sport not such a priority. We got a group of local clubs together to discuss hosting a girls event. We took inspiration from the film Lola Rennt shot in Berlin where she runs through our neighbourhood. Leyla is a common Turkish girls name. Presto! Leyla Rennt was born. Our municipal government was enthusiastic and wanted to help. Each year we have grown bigger and attracted more sports and girls.
We knew that we could achieve nothing without good networks and political lobbying so we created a networking machine! Now I am the Managing Director of Seitenwechsel and and we are looking forward to celebrating Leyla Rennt in other capital cities! Please provide a personal bio. Note this may be used in Changemakers marketing material. I studied Karate with the first female black belt in Germany in a women’s sports club. The energy I felt training with women and my respect for the talented female trainers made me excited again about the potential of sport. I decided to study Sports Science and Health at the Free University in Berlin. I wrote a MA thesis on the effect of sports on breast cancer survivors. I joined the women’s sports sports club Seitenwechsel as a swimmer and then trainer. Now I am the Managing Director.
Contact Information:
Itong Ehrke
Managing Director Seitenwechsel Berlin (Sports Project - Charity (eingetragene Verein)) Discussions about this entry |
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Hi Itong,
since Boxgirls now has a theory of change statement up
http://www.changemakers.net/en-us/node/2279#comment-3571
I would love to hear from you about the assumptions that you make on how your program activities influence your participants and what your are doing in order to reach what goals. I have posted about my interest and some outside resources more extensively here at Al-Dersimspor (fellow Berliners, by the way :) )
http://changemakers.net/en-us/node/4193#comment-3574
Jasper Nicolaisen
Free University Berlin
University Challenge
Projects like this are very important for teenage girls, especially in urban environments. It increases self-confidence and shows them just what they can do! I'd have loved to have been in something like this as a teenager. Sadly it's a bit late now... Good luck! Liz
Hi Itong,
Thanks for your post. Your Leyla Rennt program seems to have stimulated some really good discussion about gender and sport and some of the hurdles and barriers that your program and other women sport initiatives are trying to combat.
I really like your program showcasing women's participation in sport in local communities and there are similar community festival concepts in Australia (though I don't know of any that specifically target women and girls).
I'd like to know your view of female role models. Do you try to have predominantly female coaches at the festivals and other events?
In my work with developing wheelchair basketball in Australia, the young women really benefited from regular contact with successful role models. Do you invite local/national or international female athletes to the festivals or do you see a potential in your program to include this angle?
I'm quite new to Berlin but am currently living in Kreutzberg and would love to get involved with this project. Maybe we can work together to add some activities specfically targeted towards including girls and women with a disability.
I look forward to hearing from you,
Best regards,
Jackie
Jackie Lauff
Free University Berlin
University Challenge
Kevin Carroll
Changemakers Featured Commentator
Sport for a Better World Competition
i think the creators of leyla rennt, boxgirls, and similar progammes are playing the role of human catalyst or change agent for girls. just like in chemistry a catalyst is an excitatory agent that impacts a process or reaction - you are doing it on a human scale. the catalyst provides a certain amount of it's properties to alter or change a process. who's to say how much your programme impacts the young girls lives directly but, i would ask what if you're NOT there to behave like a catalyst? i think that's a good question to ponder.
i believe that all of us who decide to behave as a change agent are going to impact lives on some level. sure, it's great to be able to provide "measureable" outcomes for growth/funding support to do more work but, maybe it's also enough to simply be the provocateur for change on some level in a life?
the email response from cameron about boxgirls is right on the mark: it's EMPOWERMENT & OPPORTUNITY
by bringing a big group of girls together... (rather than being shy as only girl in a sport group)
by removing the boys and the gender specific peer pressure... (rather than needing to conform, be quiet)
by adding sports the girls might not know so it is new to everyone and no one has a natural advantage
by giving girls lots of attention and priority (rather than often feeling ignored)
that the girls
...participate rather than watch
...get to be more free in their actions than at school or in their families and so enjoy themselves
... learn about sports which might be more fun and interesting than (excuse me) just football or the main sports which are always offered
... see how it is fun to be part of a group
i applaud all of your efforts and i hope that others realize that a "successful" programme using sport to empower others may not always be measureable in a "clinical" manner.
Although it was clear to me, of course, that the title of your program is in reference to the highly successful German movie "Run Lola Run", I used to think you only picked it because it´s cool, it´s set in Berlin and allowed to replace "Leyla" for "Lola" to point to the mulitcultural approach. Thinking about the movie again, which I haven´t seen in a long time also made me aware that it deals with how small decisions that the cool and smart girl protagonist makes can change her whole life - just like the girls in this project can take their lives into their own hands. Thanks for making me see that about the movie, though I have no idea whether that played into your choice of name :). For those not familiar with the movie, read all about it here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Run_Lola_Run.
It was an international success and should also be available in most English speaking countries.
Jasper Nicolaisen
Free University Berlin
University Challenge
Hey Jasper, thanks for making me smile in the morning. Honestly we just replaced it but you insprired me to think in that way.
have a good weekend. Itong
Hey Jasper, thanks for making me smile in the morning. Honestly we just replaced it but you insprired me to think in that way.
have a good weekend. Itong
Who is your main target audience and how do you reach out to them?
How do you connect your large events with neighborhood events?
I look forward to hearing from you.
Dana Frasz
Changemakers
Thank you for all your comments and questions.
Our main target audience are all the girls who live in the community. Sportive or not, with all these different cultural backgrounds and believes. It is a very mulitkultural neighbourhood and we want all the girls to join leyla rennt and benefit from what we think what leyla rennt is. (And then we want to reach out in Berlin and maybe more...) Sports to me is one of the most important social fields where you can learn and experience a lot about yourself and others.
Leyla rennt is much more than just one big event. It is also a platform to connect with people working and playing in that field - at the event but much more before the event when you talk about the aim of Leyla rennt.
Jaspers question how being involved with leyla rennt has had an impact on girls´lives outside of sports.- Well the girls are very excited to cause interest when we go to the schools and invite them. They are very proud to be a part of it and:
We also work with girls groups, help others to build groups and to raise money for there projects, communicate and discuss a lot about ore work and opinions. We talk and work with teachers and social workers and youth clubs to focuse acting for better oportunities for girls.
This of course needs a lot of time and the change is not beeing made in a short while and not only with “one Friday afternoon” in the year. We have been working for years to make a change happen. I am not a very patience person and needed to learn a lot of patience- it´s a process of changing step for step opinions and acting of people. And sometimes (very important) you need laws for framework conditions- for example if you want space for the girls on playing fields.
You could never imagine how many different people, with very different perspectives have bad feelings about or aim to create something just for girls because, they have this strong believe about “co- education over all” or they think there is no difference in the framework conditons or they like the difference.
How do the girls know about leyla rennt? build a big network with others +Spread the word... that is the most important work for us.
Honestly sometimes I get very tired of it- p.e. very often people answer me that it is not fair to work just with girls- even on almost every soccer field in our community there are only boys. Some people tell me that we consolidate the roles of man and women.
The girls like Leyla rennt- they come to leyla rennt and bring there friends. They like the ambience which is very special. And so all this work makes a lot of sense to me. Look at our webpage the photos of the girls speak for themselves.
Good night from itong - hoping my english was good enoug to answer the questions
Thanks for your answer, Itong. And yes, your English is fine :). I´m always a little amazed at how widespread a notion it seems to be to assume that it´s "unfair" to offer something for girls only. There seems to be a backlash here that once again identifies (immigrant) boys as the "problem group" that needs to be tended to, whereas "girls only" activities are perceived to be outdated, since "feminism is over". Yeah right. So maybe having a sports program for girls up and running is a big achievement in and of itself - good luck to you!
Jasper Nicolaisen
Free University Berlin
University Challenge
Good questions Jasper
How do we know if what we do has any effect? And if we see effects how can we claim that what we did, in an hour of boxing training or in a great experience at a girls sports fest has anything to do with it?
I think many of us are used to giving good anecdotes but not really thinking about what it is that we think we do exactly, or that we allow to happen in a protected space, that causes changes in the children and youth we work with. I do not even think it makes sense to talk about causes or "we do this and then this happens" type arguments because so many people are intervening in thse skids lives how can we know who is reponsible for what.
I think though that it would be intersting for more of us to be explicit about our theories of change. So here is the question for Itong and others... What is it that you think is happening in your project that causes good results. WHat is the logic behind it? I could imagine something like:
by bringing a big group of girls together... (rather than being shy as only girl in a sport group)
by removing the boys and the gender specific peer pressure... (rather than needing to conform, be quiet)
by adding sports the girls might not know so it is new to everyone and no one has a natural advantage
by giving girls lots of attention and priority (rather than often feeling ignored)
that the girls
...participate rather than watch
...get to be more free in their actions than at school or in their families and so enjoy themselves
... learn about sports which might be more fun and interesting than (excuse me) just football or the main sports which are always offered
... see how it is fun to be part of a group
so basically the idea is that if they have a good experience at Leyla rennt they will be more likely to seek out a regular sport experience because they have learned what they get in school is not what is out there.
It is a marketing action to move girls into more regular sport where further change can take place.
On the other hand, while Leyla Rennt cannot make claims to changing girls lives through a sport intervention, by changing the sportspolitical landscape in Berlin through such a successful slowly high profile event - Leyla Rennt creates the infrastructure needed - good aware coaches, sports clubs who can appeal to girls, politicians who see success and help, press people who now have girls sports experts on their rolodex... all of these things are the sustainable structure which will appeal to more and more girls.
The next question will be ... how to turn the event into regular habits... that is a hard one which Itong has started to answer but I would love to hear more on.
Heather Cameron
Boxgirls
Free University Berlin
Hey Cameron,
good point about looking at this from an "building environments" rather than a "cause and effect" perspective. I guess it comes down to providing girls and women with space in which they can play by their rules rather than by somebody else´s and then hope that a) they might want more of that feeling elsewhere and b) that gradually these spaces might be expanded. In the end it´s about getting these girls ready to be changemakers themselves, right? Turning the event into regular habits. Do we simply have to delegate this to individual responsibility or can we do more? Great, I see your point and would also love to hear from others about it.
- Jasper Nicolaisen
Free University Berlin
Hi,
coming from Berlin myself, I think I can imagine some of the obstacles that you must be facing in your work. Thumbs up for for a multicultural initiative that makes mulit-culturalism a lived reality rather than just a high-sounding idea for sunday speeches! I´d be interested in how being involved with leyla rennt has had an impact on girls´lives outside of sports. Do you know about girls who have started to take a different approach to family problems or life at school? How would you estimate the degree to which your initiative spills over into other areas of life for the girls who get involved?
Best,
Jasper Nicolaisen
Free University Berlin
If I understand correctly what you've accomplished with Leyla Rennt, Itong, you've given Turkish-German girls a much-needed sports outlet where they can gain esteem and self-respect. Many of them perhaps have one foot in Turkish culture, the other in German, and they may face marginalization from both. A conservative Turkish perspective looks down on their desire to be athletes, while a mainstream German attitude may question their contributions to Germany as a whole.
If any of this is true, then bravo to you for what you've done!
Steve
Yes I think this is a challenge for a lot of projects. When we started with boxgirls we only did school events and it was hard to get people to join and come regularly to the club. we finally cracked it by having two amazing young women come in and lead the programme and get enough girls to come and to saty by paying a lot of attention to them. Once there were regularly 4 girls coming it got to 8 then 10 now almost 18. It is about getting past the tipping point.
How do you think Leyla Rennt could help more girls get into regular sport activities. WHat changes would the club need to make?
best
cameron
Boxgirls and Free University Berlin
hei Cameron, i appreciate your compliment. Thanx!
And yes - we already thought about leyla runs- and leyla rolls. I´m pretty sure, that we will work on it within the next two years.
We already got some girls helping us out with workshops from their sport- and they loved it. We need to enthuse more girls and work girls whenever there is an opportunity and put them in responsability for something what they really like to do. If they wants experiencend how much the younger girls appreciate their dedication - they do it again.
To show role models and help them to take responsability and feel comfortable with it is very important.
to do these work we need continuity in our work for years. Events help to get attention- more important is the work in networks before and after such an event to do "the real" work- be in contact and work with the girls.
We hopefully help to enthuse more girls doing sports in the future - therefore together with the girls we need to change structures in sports that they feel comfortable with them- that more and more girls like to join sportsclubs
well an ambitious aim...
Hey- thanx again itong
Hi Itong! Congrats on getting your entry up! I am glad to see so many cool girls projects in Berlin on changemakers. YOu my friend are a changemaker in our city and I have learned so much from you about working with other clubs, the local politics and schools. WIth Leyla Rennt you and your team have achieved something many did not think possible - getting a vibrant truly mixed festival for girls off the ground and sustainable.
I would like to ask a few things...
Have you thought about how to get more girls using wheelchairs involved? Who could be brought in to offer some fun activities for girls who are using mobility devices?
How can you capture the energy from these huge events to get more girls into helping run the festival and becoming school leaders?
What do you think is the legacy of Leyla Rennt? People in the Olympic and Paralympic Committees think about the legacy of their games - what is the legacy of yours?
I am looking forward to hear your answers
Cameron
Free University Berlin