And you can follow CGIU discussions live: live.cgiu.org

Our friends over at Activyst recently launched their campaign to help more girls around the world play sports. We think their bag AND their goal is pretty awesome! See for yourself: http://igg.me/at/activyst

http://video.today.msnbc.msn.com/today/49358193#49358193

Half the Sky- Turning oppression into opportunity for women worldwide.

The SEGway Project’s Lindsay Brown won Seventeen Magazine’s Pretty Amazing Real-Girl Cover Contest! The October issue will hit newsstands September 11th so be sure to pick one up to learn more about The SEGway Project’s story. Lindsay is beyond thrilled to give a voice to all of the soccer girls she’s worked with in Nepal, Cambodia, and Kenya and would like to thank EVERYONE who voted! Because of you The SEGway Project now has the potential to help even more GIRLS in the developing world, THANK-YOU!

is that so? let’s make sure in 40 years girls in every developing country can agree.

#MAKETHERULES 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x15WC_SfrDU

the sagarmatha girls won their first soccer game 5-0!

after nearly 6 weeks of searching for another girls team to play we finally found one! last friday afternoon we played the international school. at first the kopila girls were really intimidated because they were all wearing lip stick. my girls said “o my they’re so grown up we are going to die” i told them if my team ever played another team that was wearing lip stick we’d all laugh and say “this will be easy.” even though our girls were nervous it definitely did not show on the field. they dominated and were so aggressive i kind of felt bad for the other team. i had to remind players like Sungita and Manisha that you can’t just throw other players on the ground to get the ball. but honestly i was proud of how far they’ve come. now they are beyond confident. to think the first day we practiced they would trap the ball with their hands and stop if they were about to bump into another player and now they have no problem with getting a little rough. they looked like an entirely new team. after the game i told them to show good sportsmanship and give high fives. but before we could say anything to the other team they all ran out of the school yard…i think they were just a little afraid of the sagarmatha.

even though winning the game made the perfect ending to my trip i have to say that overall these girls showed me that soccer is about the process and not necessarily the outcome. my coach at notre dame always says this and i roll my eyes- of course we want to win. but after coaching the girls for the summer i saw that it truly is about the process of becoming a team, having fun, forgetting about problems you have at home and laughing. i think everyone would agree with this but if you stop and think about it do you really love the process? of course i don’t love getting up early for 6am workouts or running sprints and i never will. but i think i’m not alone when i say we’ve never laughed so hard when someone accidentally wore their pajamas or passed out mid bike sprint during a 6am. i think this is the part of the process that makes the outcome ever so sweeter.

i really don’t know when these little girls will find another team in surkhet to play against but i do know that they’ll be out on that field every day after school playing soccer and laughing. i feel like the soccer field has become an extension of the classroom for them. they’re becoming these little confident leaders- i can see it when Sumjana dribbles full speed down the field, Susila punts the ball past half-field or when Goma shoots it harder than most boys can . it’s crazy how far they’ve all come in a few weeks, just think in 10 years who knows what they’ll be capable of accomplishing…