Since we have first joined the Global Giving community, we have made great progress with the funds you have helped us raise. Here are our achievements
i) Women football competition has been held at local, regional and national level. The sitting ball, volley ball for disabled women has been introduced
ii) We continue to promote messages on unity and reconciliation, gender and women rights issues and HIV/AIDS prevention in all of our sports and community activities, including workshops.
iii) An international conference on Gender Equity in Sport for Social Change was held in Kigali in April 2007. It attracted women sports leaders from Uganda, Burundi, Tanzania, South Africa, The Netherlands and Rwanda
iv) Organized the first Women’s Run & Football Tournament in October 2007 as a part of the Centenary events for Kigali City with over 3000 people, including 1000 women and girls from ages 7 to 87 years old participating.

Help us reach our project goal of $105,000! Once we reach this goal, we will be ready tell you about a new project which will help us spread our work in all of Rwanda and the Region.

Background

AKWOS (Association of Kigali Women in Sports) is a non governmental organization incorporated in Kigali, Rwanda. In May 2007, AKWOS received a grant from NIKE to support the goal of AKWOS which is to empower women and girls of Rwanda and the region through sports to better handle their social-economic, cultural and educational and health challenges. This is a programmatic and financial report for the first two months of the project.

With Nike funding and the donations of generous GlobalGiving donors we have been able to fund our important work. Read the attached report to Nike on our work these past few months and see the budget for our work to date. In October we will have our grand finale event!

Thank you for your support!

Attachments:

• ReporttoNike.doc (DOC)
• NIKE_3.xls (XLS)

This video was made by a group of female and disabled sports coaches, and shows the impact that football and sitball is having on the lives of girls and the disabled in Rwanda.
The film was made during a two day video training workshop run by Insight.

Check out our video to learn more about the work AKWOF is involved in.

Links:

• Video about AKWOF

Rwanda, for the first time, has hosted an international conference on Gender Equity in Sport for Social Change. The conference which was held at the La Palisse Hotel in Kigali on 23-24 April 2007, brought together women’s sports association leaders from Uganda, Burundi, Tanzania, South Africa and The Netherlands. Kenya was invited but was not represented. The conference was also attended by the international organizations that financed it, including but not limited to: NIKE, SNV Rwanda, GLOBAL GIVING, to mention but a few. President of Association of Kigali Women Footballers (AKWOF) Ms Felicite Rwemalika to give a welcome speech. She began by requesting all participants to take a minute of silence to remember the victims of the 1994 genocide. Following this, Ms Rwemalika welcomed all the participants to a country of a thousand hills and a thousand smiles and expressed her gratitude for the big turn up of people from various organizations and countries. She gave a brief introduction of AKWOF and informed the conference that it was started as a very small organisation in the city of Kigali but has expanded and in 2007 it has teams in all the provinces of the country. Among the association milestones, Ms Rwemalika highlighted that women’s football has been integrated in the Rwandan Federation of Football Associations (FERWAFA), it has recruited teams in all the countries provinces and has used sports as a medium for transmitting other messages, such as unity and reconciliation, HIV/Aids and gender. Ms Rwemalika as president of AKOWF was also recently elected to head the commission of female football at the national level. She told the participants that before forming this association, it was very difficult for people in Rwanda to understand that women can play foot ball. “…We had many challenges, to start this association but now there are testimonies…”. She also said that this initiative was from the beginning supported by the President of the Republic of Rwanda H.E Paul Kagame and the City of Kigali helped a lot in terms of ideas, moral support and advocacy.



At the conclusion of the Conference, Felicite Rwemalika, was named the Executive Director Association of Kigali Women in Sport (AKWOS). AKWOS will build on the success achieved by AKWOF by engaging girls and women in a broader range of sports, including Netball, Sitball (for the disabled) and other sports. She will be responsible for leading the organization’s strategic growth, including fundraising and business planning, while overseeing all operational aspects of organizing leagues & events and communication and outreach to stakeholders.

This means that our project will need more funding so that we can successfully scale up our important work. Thanks to all our donors for their generosity!

Felicite was quoted in The New Times (Rwanda newspaper) about the Women's football league and how it will be launched in February. Do read the article online (link below) and check out the scan of the article from the newspaper.

Links:

• Women league kick off set for February

Attachments:

• New Times Article (PDF)
  

Some exciting news from AKWOF and Felicite…

We have struggled to be integrated into our Rwandan football federation since the year 1999 and were always pushed back. Recently, we requested the executive committee of the Rwandan Federation to review our request, and we debated a lot and at last it was agreed to create a Commissioner for Women’s Football in the federation which was approved by FiFA.

There were elections for the Presidency of the Commission. People presented their candidature and I did the same. I was given a chance to talk about myself and what I did for the women football. The general assembly of 84 people voted and I got 83 votes! I am the President of Women Football Commissioner, approved by the general assembly of the federation .This is a great achievement, I longed for this for many years, so if all goes well and we receive the funds I will use the conference to launch also the Women Football Commissioner in the Rwandan Football Federation.

We're happy to report that Nike's EMEA Finance Team held a fundraiser for our project. They raised over 1000 Euros and Nike has generously matched this donation! Thank you very much Nike team for your donation. View photos from the fundraiser below. Thank you Dee Dee Wilson for your efforts!

Pictures:

• Participants of Fundraiser (JPG)
• Playing Football (JPG)
• Having Fun! (JPG)