Girl Force: Unscripted and Unstoppable

For 2019 the theme of the International Day of the Girl was "Girl Force: Unscripted and Unstoppable". Khelo Rugby is working to play it's part creating opportunities for our unstoppable female athletes.

by Paul Walsh

It was absolutely brilliant once again being part of our girls rugby tournament on October 11th. Rightly this has become a big part of the Khelo Rugby calendar with our girls looking forward to playing in and organising the day.

With more than 500 girls playing across four locations and I'd think another 100 organising, the tournament is a great way to mobilise and encourage our girls to take action. Khelo Rugby has always operated with the attitude of "let's make it happen" and this is a good example of this. When we first came up with the initiative to have a girls only rugby event, the only question was why we hadn't done it earlier. Each year I can see more and more benefits from the tournament and making the focus of October on our girls.

The tournament itself has become a focal point for everyone in Khelo Rugby, setting a clear target and getting everyone working together towards a common goal. Coaches need to get their teams organised, bring out the next generation of girls to play, brothers encourage sisters, sisters encourage sisters, each community wants to play well.

2019 was the first time we co-ordinated four tournaments on the same day, and seeing the photos ping in was special. It seems almost everyone now gets to see social media so we tried to quickly share images from each location so the girls could feel a sense of unity even if they were 100s of miles apart.

More than 45% of children in Khelo Rugby are girls and this tournament has been a catalyst to achieve this. As a team we always need to be focussed on ensuring we keep levels of participation from our girls up. In this we absolutely need to keep taking what is the tougher path.

India's female rugby players are an incredibly strong and resilient community and should be celebrated at every opportunity. It was really special to see three of India's rugby stars being showcased at the recent "We the Women" event in Kolkata, specially since it included Jungle Crows star Sangita. Our Khelo Rugby girls can feel proud to be a part of this.

I promised myself I would keep this article short so I won't go over all the reasons why girls are perhaps the single most important part of our planets future. You'd have to be sleeping under a rock not to have seen the impact Greta Thunberg is having across the world. It's hard to believe it was four years ago I wrote my blog "Who Wants to Change the World?" - the messages of how 600 million girls will bring change are still valid. Our girls play rugby, but this is more than just a game, like 11 October was more than just a tournament. The impact belief and empowerment can have are very real. It's "More Than Just a Try."

We've still much work to do and we'll keep a special focus for the rest of October, but our efforts shouldn't rest. This is a full time commitment. We'll have charchas in communities for the rest of the month, taking time to discuss and think about what we're doing, how we can do more, achieve more. The girls want to share more messages through posters and slogans, so we'll showcase those to more children at our end of month KSL (Khelo Sporting League) get together.

We enjoyed 11 October as the #DayoftheGirl but for real change to come we need to support girls everyday.