Football Delhi celebrated the International Women’s day with initiating a noble campaign to empower underprivileged girls by way of football. Football Delhi today (on Monday) launched “Gift A Ball” campaign at Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium Complex in New Delhi.
The campaign, that seeks donation of one football, will pass on the balls to girls from the underprivileged society for encouraging them to play football.
Minister of Youth Affairs and Sport (Independent Charge) Kiren Rijiju launched the campaign in presence of former Indian national football team captain Baichung Bhutia. Women football players in large numbers attended the event.
“I’m extremely happy to see Footballs in the hands of all girl players,” said Rijiju and added that everyone should have a pen as well as football in their hands. He assured that there will be a separate League for women in Delhi.
Bhutia said that this unique initiative will encourage more and more girls to play football.
“Developing women’s football in Delhi is one of the top priorities for the Association. We wanted to celebrate International Women’s Day with a message which would encourage more girls to play football and with this campaign,” said Football Delhi president Shaji Prabhakaran.
“We wanted to reinforce our commitment towards women’s football. Football is a sport with unlimited possibilities and when more girls from low-income families will be encouraged to play football in India than world of opportunities will open for the girls. We are targeting to gift 5,000-10,000 footballs and we urge everyone to be part of this campaign and support us to make more girls play football”.
Football Delhi has also initiated a crowdfunding campaign from today to fund the ‘Gift A Ball’ initiative. Funds generated from the crowdfunding will be entirely used to gift footballs to underprivileged girls.
During the launch event dignitaries and members of the Football Delhi gifted footballs to each of more than 200 underprivileged girls.
To promote the campaign in social media Football Delhi will be using the following hashtags: #GiftABall #GiftAFootball #GirlChild
