Photo credit: Isha Johansen, CAF
Isha Johansen, the former president of the Sierra Leone Football Association (SLFA), was emotional after visiting Sierra Leone’s Freetown Female Correctional Centre. She is the brain behind the revolutionary coaching course designed specifically for incarcerated women.
Launched by the Confederation of African Football (CAF), the program, called Football for Reform, is the first of its kind for female prisoners in Sierra Leone. According to local non-governmental group AdvocAid, there are currently about 80 women and their children living at the Freetown Female Correctional Centre.
“I saw very young girls there, an inmate with a baby on her lap and another pregnant,” Johansen told the BBC. “90% of those inmates were in there because of poverty or petty crimes. They had no business being there. They are spending five, six, or eight years doing nothing.”
She continued, “I had to make a change. I was compelled to do something and football was a massive tool I had at my disposal.”
As she had envisioned, the initiative has changed the lives of women like Marie, whose real name has been concealed by the authorities. She has been incarcerated in the correctional facility for almost four years. She is one of 26 women, including five police officers, who completed the eight-day course last year.
After completing the course, participants received a CAF-accredited D license, which permits them to teach football at the grassroots level.
“Life in prison right now, the only thing you need is respect,” Marie said. “When you have respect, it is like you are not in prison.”
She added, “It was more than the word great. I am proud to get my certificate. With this coaching certificate, I want to be able to get a job.”
Due to the restricted resources within the penal facility, the first training sessions were conducted on the Astroturf pitch at the SLFA academy in Freetown. The football federation gave kits and equipment to help get the program started. The prison is now planning to construct its own football field in the next few months after being inspired by the success.
For people who are not interested in coaching, the initiative provides various ways to participate. Some women are now making football kits, such as jerseys and bibs, for clubs around Sierra Leone. Developing practical skills for life outside of prison is the primary objective.
“What I’d like to see is when these girls go back into society, they don’t end up back in prison,” said Johansen. “When they come out, they’ve got skills. They can go to the football federation to look for a job, and they can coach in schools.”
However, the CAF project is not limited to Sierra Leone. It has been launched in Ghana and is currently being implemented in Liberia. It is likely to spread to other African countries.
In February, convicts at Nsawam, located just north of Ghana’s capital Accra and housing more than half of Ghana’s female prison population, joined the program.
“Being in prison here is very complicated for us,” said one of the Ghanaian inmates. “We are controlled on everything. It gives us a headache. But coaching is my passion, so when we heard about the course I was so happy to be part of it. We have learnt a lot of skills, like dribbling techniques.”
Among the trainers was Mercy Tagoe, a former Ghanaian international who coached the national team and competed in the 1999 Women’s World Cup. She believes the coaching license is a path to reintegration.
“They can do something with this license. Once they leave prison, they can start with the grassroots within their local area,” she remarked. “They go to prison to be reformed. So this course can help them move on with their lives.”
In the future, Johansen hopes to expand the program to other regions, including Asia and South America, in collaboration with CAF and FIFA.
“It’s about using football for positive social change,” she expressed. “Football is so much more than just 90 minutes on the pitch. This is an example of that.”
Beyond football, Johansen told CAF Women’s Football that she initiated the first Women of Excellence Awards and the Pink Charity Fund, a breast cancer awareness program providing screening facilities to women with low income.