In brief

Moving the Goalposts believes that football has a unique power to unlock the potential of disadvantaged girls and young women. Moving the Goalposts is a sport for development organisation that harnesses the power of sport to overcome social obstacles girls and young women face in coastal Kenya; they create a safe space for girls and young women to understand their rights and claim them —  take up leadership roles and have a voice in the society – or as they say “Tunaweza” (We can!).

Problem to be tackled

Moving the Goalposts is a movement for girls and young women to fight for their rights and push the boundaries on creating a more equitable society using football to teach lessons around sexual and reproductive health rights, child safeguarding and leadership in Kilifi County and other coastal Kenyan communities.

Local partner

Moving the Goalposts operates in coastal Kenya, specifically in the counties Kilifi County, Mombasa County and Kwale County.

Through this project, Moving the Goalposts builds on 15 years of lessons learned to build, deepen and scale up interventions that leverage the power of football to improve access to education, health information and services along with enhanced safeguarding for girls aged between 9-24 years.

Moving the Goalposts continues to build on its impactful ‘Community Leagues’ – which are comprised of weekly football practices and games, leaderships camps and capacity building workshops.

Moving the Goalposts implements the “Binti Kwa Binti” (Sister to Sister) intervention that is designed to meet the special needs of young mothers aged 19 years and younger. The intervention will create support groups through which young mothers will be equipped with knowledge and skills on taking care of their babies including nutrition, pre-natal and post-natal care, avenues to return back to school or access to other means of livelihood.

Moving the Goalposts implements workshops focused on financial literary and entrepreneurship and through a variety of partnerships with technical and vocational institutes.

Moving the Goalposts launches the #NafaSawi project to engage in advocacy towards enhancing equitable distribution of resources for sports for girls at both the County and school level.

Beneficiaries

Moving the Goalposts works directly with thousands of girls and young women aged 9-24 in rural Kenya. Specifically, Moving the Goalposts looks to engage with out of schoolgirls and young women and teenage moms and will also work with local governments and key decision makers through its #NafasiSawi project to shift the status quo of how resources are allocated to sports programming, an attempt to change the system to allow for a more equitable allocation of resources to be targeted to girls and women sporting activities.

Moving the Goalposts has identified these target groups because there is a massive gap in services being provided to child and teenage mothers, a disproportionate amount of women and girls dropping out of school and a strikingly high rate of gender based crime against young women and girls.

SOL’s contribution

With the support from The SOL Foundation, Laureus Sport for Good will be able to continue to tackle the likes of violence, discrimination and disadvantage around the world; both partners believe that Moving the Goalposts, a long standing and well respected grantee, would represent impactful investments over the next years.

Project partner

Laureus Sport for Good uses the power of sport to end violence, discrimination and disadvantage for children and young people all around the world. It supports actually more than 200 programmes in over 40 countries with funding and capacity building, helping to change the lives of over 200’000 marginalised and disadvantaged children and young people – from increasing access to education, to tackling gang violence, to supporting the mental health of youth in post-trauma situations.

Laureus Sport for Good was founded under the Patronage of Nelson Mandela, in line with his belief that “sport has the power to change the world” after seeing it play a crucial role in rebuilding post-apartheid South African society.