Rio Olympics legacy to help girls

Rio presents an innovative joint programme set up to empower young women and girls through sport.

UN Women, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and Always (#LikeAGirl) will be celebrating women’s and girls’ empowerment through sport and the shared experiences of the ‘One Win Leads to Another’ programme in Brazil.

UN Women’s Executive Director, Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, was invited to carry the Olympic Torch at the 2016 Summer Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, as were 15 year-old Brazilian handball player Thaiza Vitória da Silva and Adrielle Alexandre, 12, participants of the ‘One Win Leads to Another’ programme.

The UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon took the Olympic Flame from Mlambo-Ngcuka and he in turn passed it to Thaiza Vitória.

UN Women and the International Olympic Committee have been partners since 2012, and at the 2016 Rio Games, they are presenting ‘One Win Leads to Another’, an innovative joint programme set up to empower young women and girls through sport.

Launched on 6 August, the idea behind the programme is to build the leadership skills in adolescent girls living in socially vulnerable contexts through quality sport training, by creating safe spaces for them and giving them the tools and the knowledge to help them break social barriers.

It also equips the participants with basic economic skills, and aims to improve their ability to influence decisions that impact their lives at all levels.

The programme is being piloted in the Olympic Villas located in disadvantaged areas of Rio de Janeiro.

On reaching adolescence girls face new challenges, such as less autonomy regarding their bodies, less encouragement and space to develop sport skills, more pressure to conform to traditions, and the almost exclusive responsibility to avoid early pregnancy, while their male counterparts enjoy new privileges reserved largely only for men, among which are autonomy, mobility and power.

This period of life is a critical time for interventions to reverse this cycle of inequality and generate long-term impact in the lives of adolescent girls and their communities.

Sport is considered a powerful tool for girls and young women’s empowerment. At puberty, 49 per cent of girls drop out of sports – 6 times the dropout rate for boys – limiting the realisation of their full potential.

But of the girls who have already taken part in a nine-month curriculum designed by Women Win in over 30 countries, 89 per cent said they saw themselves as leaders, compared to 46 per cent before the programme.

By the end of the programme, 93 per cent knew where to report violence and 99 per cent of girls were confident that they would get a job.

This curriculum has been adapted for the Olympic legacy programme in Brazil, and kicked off in the lead up to the 2016 Rio Games.

‘One Win Leads to Another’ aims to reach 2,500 girls, aged 10-18 years, and 300 young out-of-school mothers this year, delivering a transformative programme to some of the most-at-risk girls in Rio de Janeiro.

The pilot has a rigorous monitoring and evaluation component, and is intended to test and refine concepts in preparation for a sustainable and scalable model to be replicated throughout Brazil and Latin America.

Twelve year-old Adrielle Alexandre dreams of being a professional athlete or a rhythmic gymnastics teacher.

At least four times a week after school, Adrielle goes to an Olympic Villa – one of 22 public spaces with free sports facilities managed by the municipality – to take ballet, gymnastics and Pilates classes.

Twice a week, after her sport practice, she attends thematic workshops guided by a multidisciplinary team of pedagogues, social workers and psychologists, and learns about leadership and self-esteem, sexual and reproductive health and rights, ending violence against women and girls and how to financially plan for a better future.

“I learned that being a winner is about making my dreams come true, helping others and helping change my community,”Adrielle said.

“When I carried the Olympic Torch, I was not only dreaming about becoming an Olympic rhythmic gymnast, but also about making my community a place free of violence,” she added.