THE BLOG BY CPD FOOTBALL | The World of Indian football and beyond by Chris Punnakkattu Daniel

Discover Football to host Women’s Rights and Football Festival 2017 in Goa

Discover Football to host Women's Rights and Football Festival 2017 in Goa (Photo courtesy: Discover Football)

German organisation Discover Football, the world’s leading network that use football as a tool to advocate for a world in which girls and women can do sports without being discriminated against for any reason, will be hosting the Women’s Rights and Football Festival 2017 in Mapusa, Goa from August 5 to 13, 2017.

The event will be more than just a sports event. “Comprising a friendly tournament as well as topic-related workshops and skills-building trainings, the event focuses on football as a tool for addressing discrimination against women and girls and fight for empowerment and gender equality. We use football to strengthen mutual solidarity to fight for women´s rights / sexual and reproductive health rights and for a more inclusive football. Let´s make football a home for EVERY girl and woman! Therefore, we invite women teams from India to apply for participation of the festival,” Discover Football announced on their website www.discoverfootball.de.

The main goals of the event are to share our experiences and bring together women from different backgrounds, to learn from each other and build a strong network. To foster the exchange and stress the idea of overcoming cultural, religious and language barriers, the tournament will be played by mixed teams put together from the pool of chosen teams.

The Women’s Rights and Football Festival 2017 will be partnered by the Goa Football Association (GFA), Foot and Ball, Tibet Women’s Football, Feminist Approach to Technology (FAT) and Deutsche Welle. The project is supported by the Federal Foreign Office (Auswärtiges Amt).

Discover Football’s work has been recognized by the United Nations, the German Football Association (DFB) as well as German Chancellor Angela Merkel.