Touching lives: Tribal girls learn to fly through power of Beautiful Game

RANCHI: The way to the ground is dusty. From a distance it resembles a paddy field. Or at best a make-shift area for children to play. It is 5.30 in the morning and you suddenly happen to chance upon tribal girls from villages close-by kicking a football. Their laughs and shrieks of joy echo around the area.

But it is not a story of happin­ess. Just like their life, it’s some ki­nd of miracle that these resili­e­nt girls are kicking around a fo­o­tball — jovial and carefree. Other times they might have fallen victim to human-trafficking, or working somewhere as a domestic help, that is if they survived abuse from their alcoholic kins.

These girls from Yuwa, an NGO run by American couple Fr­anz Gastler and wife Rose Th­o­mson Gastler, have used the Be­autiful Game to try and ov­e­r­c­o­­m­e obstacles. Th­eir selection pr­­ocess too is u­nique. It needs school and practice attendance and vote from peers on whether they are upho­l­d­ing values of the institution.

Having grown up in utter poverty and with parental pressure pushing th­em towards early marriage, th­ese girls never dreamt of vent­uring beyond the confines of Ranchi, forget the country. But with the help of Yuwa, the girls got the chance to participate in the Donosti Cup in San Sebastian, Spain in July.

However, as with life, nothing comes easy for these girls. Needing birth certificates for the visa process, the selected girls landed up in the local panchayat office to request birth certificates (many were born at home). A few were ‘humiliated and slapped’ and needed local administrators’ intervention.

“What is one slap if we end up being happy in the long run? It was a tr­ip to remember ultim­ately,” a girl said. Incid­e­n­tally, quite a fe­w girls we­r­e selected for the age-group national team but due to ‘abusive behaviour’, the NGO has stopped sending these girls to camps. Th­rough the power of football and education, the girls now ha­ve a fighting chance at succeedi­n­­g in life! Believe in miralces: P15