Reality Gives and Yuwa will start a girls football for empowerment program in Dharavi by end of April. YUWA is an organisation with roots in the state of Jharkhand, in North Central India, a region infamous for child marriage, human trafficking and lack of opportunities for girls. Yuwa started its first football club in February 2009 for the young girls in the area, providing an escape from the day-to-day grind of their lives. Through football, Yuwa has seen incredible success: They have gotten girls back into school, are combating child marriage and reducing human trafficking. It has since expanded to 250 girls covering 15 villages. You can learn more at https://realitygives.org/yuwa_project.

Reality Gives is excited to see this powerful program come to Dharavi. We will start the project by end of April on a ground close to the Maharashtra Nature Park in Sion, inside Dharavi. This is a little more far away from our community where we run the Community Center and Kindergarten which means it will also open a whole new group of residents to us.

The coaches will come with Franz, the founder of Yuwa from Jharkhand with a lot of experience in girls football coaching and enthusiasm to also train girls in Dharavi.

We target 70 girls by end of the first year. In Dharavi many girls spend most of their time with housework, raising up siblings or they get pregnant too early which means the cycle continues. We would like to see girls playing football with us who are neglected from their families and society, who are drop-outs  from school or be aimed at getting married-off early.

Since it is the first project which is not directly funded by Reality Tours and Travel we chose this project to be our candidate for the Global Giving Challenge in April (www.globalgiving.co.uk/pr/10000/proj9991a.html.)

We aim to raise £8000 to provide football kit, coaching and transport to tournaments to 70 girls in Dharavi. With your help we can make this project happen. Please consider a donation on www.globalgiving.co.uk/pr/10000/proj9991a.htmlor become a Reality Gives amabassador to spread the word about this project, (https://realitygives.org/blog/index.php/2012/04/02/get-involvedbecome-reality-gives.)