Girl-Centred Design
Girl-centred design means a participatory approach to designing your sport programme that engages girls in meaningful ways throughout the process. By tailoring your design approach to center the girls you work with and their unique needs, you design with rather than for them. Through consultation and collaboration with girls, you can design a programme that fits their needs, addresses their challenges, and equips them with important life skills they need to access their rights. Sport offers a powerful tool for strengthening these life skills, and yet there are often many barriers for girls’ participation in sport across the world. Below you will find information on how sport can be used to strengthen life skills for adolescent girls, and strategies to address common barriers to girls participation in sport.
Life Skills through Sport
A sport programme can be the perfect place to learn, develop, and practise life skills that empower adolescent girls to recognise and claim their rights. This page describes specific life skills that can be addressed through sport, and why they are important for adolescent girls.
Barriers to Girls’ Participation in Sport
Around the world, girls and women face unique challenges to participating in sport. You can learn more about a few examples of these barriers in the video below.
Dealing with Barriers and Challenges
Below are common barriers and obstacles to girls’ participation in sport faced by girls sport programmes around the world, as well as suggestions for how you can design a programme that overcomes them.
NORAH Toolkit – How can sports and games boost self-confidence?
In this toolkit (in Dutch), we follow Norah. This fictional protagonist explains all about the barriers girls may experience to sports and exercise on the Cruyff Court. Norah’s story is based on the experiences of Cruyff Foundation Coaches.
Healthy Girls – Body, Power, Self-Love
The aim of the programme is to empower girls through sports and activities primarily focusing on motor skills and sports as a tool for personal development. The curriculum (in Dutch) for the Healthy Girls programme consists of 15 sessions and an additional appendix of energisers.
