Building Grit in Girls Through Mountain Biking

In Rwanda, women are breaking gender stereotypes by playing soccer. After the Rwandan genocide of 1994, Felicite Rwemarika used her own money to fund the organization Women in Sport. Since then, it’s helped women process their trauma, and challenge traditional gender roles in the country.

An all-girls football team is challenging gender stereotypes and empowering their teenage players in the process. An international NGO named Magic Bus teamed up with a Mumbai-based women's collective named Parcham to find girls and parents willing to participate. After a slow start, the group now has a healthy number of players who are also both Muslim and Hindu. The process of becoming confident taking up public space and the fight to claim their spot back from the boys have given the girls more confidence, and parents are now highly supportive of their daughters.

Obesity has become a health crisis for many women in the African-American community, but a group known as GirlTrek is working to change this by making exercise a social norm and creating supportive connections between women with shared goals. This new organization, which works to identify barriers that many in this community face, channels African-American history to encourage black women to walk their way toward better health.

Yuwa is a nonprofit organization that draws girls into education through sport, giving them the opportunity to play football while also providing high-quality instruction and skills training. The program serves about 600 students and has seen participants go on to study at universities, pursue coaching careers, and even play in the national football federation.

The Iron Dames is one of just three all-female professional racing teams that competes in Grand Touring endurance racing around the world. The group was founded to change the perception of women in the sport and they have successfully shifted attitudes by qualifying for the sport’s top races. While getting sponsorships can be difficult for women in the field, the Iron Dames have received endorsements from top car manufacturers, which further reinforces the legitimacy of their talent and is a sign of their progress in the male-dominated sport.

To encourage more Black people to explore outdoors, individuals and organizations in Colorado are working to address underlying barriers such as access to transportation and gear, as well as fear and concerns of safety. Despite the groups still encountering "frustrating" incidents with other outdoor recreationalists, the movement has spread to other states and steadily attracted a growing community of members.

With stay-at-home orders in place for Coloradans due to the COVID-19 pandemic, many hikers are encouraging people to participate in urban hiking. This growing movement asks people to “treat your neighborhood like a great hike,” says one urban hiker. And a new book on urban hiking highlights 22 different hikes people can take through some local cities and towns. With more people looking to participate in outdoor activities, however, some trails and natural resources have been damaged as people try to social distance and some neighborhood access points have been congested.

RVA League For Safer Streets uses a basketball league as "bait" to change young men's lives by teaching critical thinking and better ways to resolve conflicts. The Richmond, Virginia, program was co-founded in prison by a former drug dealer convicted of murder who learned the methods of cognitive behavioral therapy behind bars. Paroled after 23 years, he began counseling youth with an approach that police say contributed to a significant drop in Richmond's gang violence and other crime.

To better serve all communities and increase safety for families, the Philadelphia Department of Parks and Recreation is offering free swim lessons at community pools. Building off of the success of University of Pennsylvania's We Can Swim summer program which offers lessons to "Philadelphia children who might not otherwise have the opportunity to learn," the idea has already been deemed a success given the enrollment numbers.

In the United Kingdom, an initiative known as parkrun, is working to bring people together for a weekly free 5K run in order to inspire physical fitness as well as community interaction. Although the US is not seeing as much success with its iteration of the initiative, there are several key lessons – such as corporate sponsorship and government involvement – that the advocates of the initiative can learn from.