Fundraising to Empower disadvantaged girls through sports

We are a 501c3 nonprofit organization in California and support grassroot projects in economically backward areas in India and Mali (West Africa). Organization Mission: Leverage sport as a platform for facilitating leadership & community building among underprivileged girls (globally, but mainly focused on India), and challenge discriminating social norms by cultivating & spreading contemporary & relatable hero stories of girls who play. Problem being addressed: Problem: Adolescent girls from tribal and slum communities make a tenth of India’s population, and are typically out of school and from families earning <1USD/day. They are the most badly affected by social evils of child marriage (affecting 38% of India’s female population) and human trafficking (affecting 16M women every year in India, nearly half of whom are adolescents and children). Importance: An average 22% annual reduction rate of child marriages is needed to meet the SDG target of eliminating child marriage by 2030 vs 3.3% average annnual reduction rate in the past 25 years in India. Scholarship program goal: Developing underprivileged girl leaders and inspiring changes in discriminating gender norms with sport How the scholarship program tries to address the problem: Problem: Discriminatory gender practices drive adolescent girls out of school, leading to their poor economic opportunity, which drives child marriage and human trafficking. Insight: Absence of sport is a key gender discrimination marker, and sport is proven to greatly improve the chances of self determination among girls. Plan: A leadership program for adolescent girls who play, selected from impoverished tribal & slum communities in India. Rationale: Develop girl leaders, and popularize relatable hero stories to initiate an internal change movement to make sport and subsequently empowerment on life choices a norm for girls, and reverse trends of trafficking and child marriage. Evidence that this program may be effective: Positive girl-led community impact, with potential for exponential scale both as a design for others to adopt as well as from leadership action of beneficiaries. E.g. scholarship recipient Rupanti fought moral policing to play village soccer, missed national trials as she turned bread-earner as a teenager after losing her father and brother to violence, resumed sport thanks to the Aahan Tribal Development Foundation, represented India at the 2017 Homeless World Cup in Norway aided with KickOff sponsorship, and uses her scholarship today to run a coaching academy for 450+ girls and boys across 4 rural districts.