<\/p>\n
Female footballers in South Sudan are breaking down \u201ctaboo topics\u201d relating to their personal health, thanks to a pilot project organised in the young nation.<\/p>\n
\u201cGirls and women\u2019s football, it\u2019s not just football, giving access to play the game, but it\u2019s really tackling some of these social challenges or taboo topics,\u201d Arijana Demirovic, the head of world governing body Fifa\u2019s women\u2019s football development, said.<\/p>\n
In South Sudan, girls \u201cstruggle quite a lot around the topic of menstruation, menstrual hygiene and also access to sanitary products,\u201d Bosnian-born Demirovic said.<\/p>\n
Fifa estimates that 70% of women in the East African nation that gained independence in 2011, after six years of civil war did not have access to hygiene products, preventing girls from regularly attending school and practising sports.<\/p>\n
Demirovic and her team visited the capital Juba several times, holding workshops with members of the national team, and distributing hygienic products and kits.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had to understand what they do for hygiene, what they know and what they use as traditional products,\u201d said the 33-year-old.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn Africa, too often young girls use inappropriate fabrics, mattress sponges or pieces of cut-out fabric,\u201d Senegalese Yaya Helene Ndiaye, the president of the NGO Kitambaa, which accompanies Fifa in South Sudan, said.<\/p>\n
\u2018Empowering girls\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cI was there from the first meeting,\u201d South Sudanese international midfielder Esther Luis, who plays for Munuki FC in Juba, said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were really happy that this type of project came to our country. I really appreciated it. In our culture, it\u2019s not always easy to talk about this kind of subject.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhile most of my teammates understand that it\u2019s just part of life, in rural areas it can sometimes be difficult to talk about.\u201d<\/p>\n
Through football \u201cwe can reach them,\u201d said 19-year-old Luis, of girls who come from rural areas. \u201cWhen their teammates explain it to them, they feel less embarrassed.\u201d<\/p>\n
Demirovic said she has been encouraged by the \u201cpositive feedback\u201d that Fifa\u2019s \u2018Menstrual Health and Education through Football\u2019 project had received and its success in \u201cempowering girls to take care of their own health\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of the girls told us that they use the sanitary pads, it also solves a question of budget for their families,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey have shared information with their siblings.\u201d<\/p>\n
She added: \u201cThey\u2019ve seen quite a lot of benefits of it and seeing how some of these girls\u2019 lives have changed in a very positive way in a very short time.<\/p>\n
\u201cCoaches from other member associations have also approached us, not necessarily having access to the sanitary products but really making sure that girls do get to have this education on their menstrual cycle and how it impacts them and their performance.\u201d<\/p>\n
Demirovic said NGOs working in South Sudan were helping girls produce reusable pads themselves.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the future, they could even produce them locally, at low cost, and this would also help them in terms of economic empowerment,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s a bit of a next step within the project to make sure that this type of initiatives are sustainable.<\/p>\n
\u201cSouth Sudan is a positive example of what football can do.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Female footballers in South Sudan are breaking down \u201ctaboo topics\u201d relating to their personal health, thanks to a pilot project organised in the young nation. \u201cGirls and women\u2019s football, it\u2019s not just football, giving access to play the game, but it\u2019s really tackling some of these social challenges or taboo topics,\u201d Arijana Demirovic, the head […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1219976","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-africa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1219976","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1219976"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1219976\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1219976"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1219976"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1219976"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}