By: Foday Manneh
A non-profitable and women-focused foundation called Future Is Female (FIF) has been established to strengthen women’s and girls’ empowerment through sports.
Primarily focusing on women and girls, the foundation is all-inclusive and non-discriminatory and aims to raise awareness of the societal role of sports in eradicating challenges of gender norms and inequality in acquiring potential opportunities available.
The founder of the FIF Foundation, Mariama Sowe, said her organization intends to achieve its goal by creating a platform where women and girls can participate in sports to unleash their leadership potential and hidden skills.
She added, “This would be made possible by researching serious matters regarding women in sports and bringing recommendations to remedy the problems.”
Stereotypical norms against women’s sports are deeply rooted challenges in achieving such goals in patriarchal societies. However, one of Mariama’s motivations is to influence change by combating discrimination and limiting women’s access.
“Stereotypes, discrimination against women and girls in sports, and social norms are One of the key aims behind forming this foundation. Therefore, these factors will not affect our work,” she encoded.
“We intend to do this by creating awareness and using real-life scenarios to change social perspectives. People like Nadia Nadim are role models many women and girls admire. Thus, we will use her life experience to create awareness,” she added.
The young lady also believes the media has a crucial role to play and would, therefore, serve as an essential partner in their pursuit to increase women’s success.
Meanwhile, International sports organizations and school sports are some of the main focuses of the FIF Foundation, which could be realized through partnerships.
“We plan to partner with international sports clubs and foundations that support women and girls in sports. I am currently in talks with a foundation in the United Kingdom that I intend to partner with to assist young girls that want to take sports as a career,”
“Sports have to be part of the curriculum. If you look at countries where sports are developed, they invest a lot in school sports. Therefore, we intend to work with the Ministry of basic education to see how we can achieve this feat,” Mariama promised.
