From the time Riya Rani joined her Yuwa football team as a spirited 9-year-old in 2013, she wanted to lead. Yuwa’s three interconnected programs – football teams, workshops, and an all-girls school – represent a single, holistic, intensive strategy to give vulnerable girls the confidence, leadership skills, education, and tools they need to break out of poverty.
Riya was dazzled by the concept of a female football coach and quickly announced that she planned to become a coach as well. Coming from a family of subsistence farmers who live below the poverty line, Riya’s parents expected that she too would drop out of school as a young teenager and get married without pursuing higher education or a career.
Through many home-visits and meetings between Yuwa staff and Riya’s family, her parents slowly began to see their daughter’s education as an investment in her future. Over the past decade of being a Yuwa student, football player, and coach, Riya’s dreams have grown and taken shape despite incredible odds.
Over the years, Riya and her family have suffered from domestic violence as a result of her father’s alcoholism. Yuwa staff have led interventions with her family and worked to involve both her parents in Yuwa School’s Management Committee, which resulted in a reduction in the violence at home over time.
All of her hopes for her future nearly imploded in 2018 after Riya Rani acquired a serious illness that resulted in extended absence from school. But she didn’t give up, and neither did the Yuwa staff. After working with local medical professionals, Yuwa staff helped Riya Rani get the diagnosis and treatment she needed. The Yuwa teachers gave Riya Rani one-on-one tutoring until she was able to rejoin her class, eventually getting back on track both academically and socially. “Yuwa helped me to save my life,” Riya reflects on that time. “If I was not in Yuwa, I would be married now.”
Throughout her decade at Yuwa, Riya Rani gravitated towards leadership roles as a coach, as a life-skills workshop facilitator, as a member of student council, and—most recently—as an outspoken advocate for mental health who is unafraid to speak about her own personal struggles. Today, Riya is studying Environmental Science on a full scholarship at one of the top private universities in India: Azim Premji University. She graduated from Yuwa School in May 2023. Receiving her full scholarship to Azim Premji University, as the first person in her family to pursue higher education, was an emotional culmination to Riya Rani’s remarkable journey.
This article is contributed by Yuwa. Yuwa is a community-based non-profit organization which uses sport and education to enable girls in rural Jharkhand to take their futures into their own hands.
)
