My

Story

Kuruthum

“I grew up with my father, my mother and two brothers. Due to an accident, my mother is physically disabled and so my father is the person who cares for all of us. When I was young, I was not allowed to play football. In Tanzania, it is not a normal thing to play football as a girl and my father also told me that it is not expected of girls to play football. The only thing that was important for my parents was that I went to school. Due to my mother’s accident, some of the domestic chores like cooking, washing, etc. was left to me as I was the only person at home who could do these things. At the beginning it was very hard for me to be responsible for everything, but there was no way out and I had to cope with that situation.

After graduating college where I studied community development, I decided I wanted to make a change, so I took up football. My uncle had started a football club and I joined the team. It is a mixed team, which is quite unusual, but it is hard to find female players. In 2017, I started to coach the children in the club. In the beginning I was not sure if I was able to teach children and if they would respect me, but in the first module of the Scort education I learned a lot of techniques to convince the kids I was capable. My confidence grew and now I know that I can do it. One of my main challenges is the fact that parents don’t trust female coaches. But due to my education as a Young Coach it will get better. One useful thing that I have learnt in the last module and that I really appreciate is how to deal with kids with disabilities. Before I didn’t know exactly how I should train them but, in the meantime, I have 3 disabled kids in my training and it works well.

Due to the Young Coach Education I manage to teach the kids in the right way and it helps me also with educating Peer Young Coaches. One thing I really liked was to get to know the other participants from the different regions and to have the possibility to exchange our opinions and experiences. I feel happy to be a Young Coach because now I have the possibility to pass something useful on to children. The number of children attending my activities increased after each module and that makes me happy. Football in general means a lot to me, it is my life as well as a job opportunity.”