India has the highest number of girls and women married before age 18 in the world ¹ . Over the last decade, India has also witnessed one of the largest declines in child marriage prevalence, from nearly 50% to 27%. Recently, sports and play have emerged as viable and promising tools to address gender inequality and prevailing gender norms, so playing a role in reducing cases of child marriage.
This handbook – developed by Pro Sport Development, in collaboration with Girls Not Brides: The Global Partnership to End Child Marriage – is a resource for grassroots facilitators working with adolescents and youth to address gender norms and end child marriage. It, and the accompanying three-day training workshop, is designed to ensure facilitators have the skills needed to lead and employ sports-based games and activities as a means to build leadership, communication and team- building skills, and enhance gender equality among mixed- gender groups of adolescents and youth.
The handbook should be used within the overall programme framework, to collectivise mixed groups of adolescents and youth, create a safe environment for them to interact and get comfortable with each other, initiate dialogues around gender, and promote skills. The games and activities can be adapted by facilitators to suit their context.
Benefits of using sports-based approaches in addressing gender inequality and child marriage:
- Use of sports in development programmes has shown effective results in challenging gender stereotypes and taboos.
- The impact of sport is not just at an individual level – changes have also been seen in families, communities and local institutions.
- Sport has emerged as a livelihood option for many girls, especially with a growing demand for female coaches, facilitators and sports professionals.
- Sport is an effective tool to mobilise diverse audiences – it is also a method that is very helpful in bringing together people from different backgrounds.
- Sport is a flexible tool for development programmes – depending on the type of barriers faced by organisations and individuals, sports programmes, activities and games can be designed to require low or no equipment and can be conducted in limited and indoor spaces.