Breaking Barriers through Soccer: Jordan Sports Visitors
Uploader: Empowering Women and Girls through Sports
Original upload date: Thu, 29 Jan 2015 00:00:00 GMT
Archive date: Fri, 03 Dec 2021 13:51:08 GMT
As a part of the U.S. Department of State’s Empowering Women and Girls through Sports Initiative, this soccer exchange was designed to inspire more Jordanian women and girls to become involved in spor
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ts and experience the benefits of participation: increased self-esteem, improved academics, and improved health. These fourteen adolescent girls—members of Jordan’s U17 national women’s soccer team—found their voices over the course of the 10-day exchange and left confidently declaring their identities as strong women returning home to make a positive different in their communities.
Teaming up with the University of Tennessee’s Center for Sport, Peace, and Society as the cooperative partner, the State Department’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs and U.S. Embassy Amman created this program as a follow-up to the groundbreaking envoy program in April of 2014 when former USWNT players Mary Harvey and Danielle Slayton traveled to Jordan.
During visits to Washington, D.C., Boca Raton, FL, and Raleigh, NC, the delegation participated in soccer clinics with their American peers, learned from former USWNT players Julie Foudy, Carla Overbeck, and Cindy Parlow-Cone and took part in sessions on Title IX, health, and peace-building, while gaining exposure to the United States through the lens of women’s sports. Since the program coincided with the UN International Day of Persons with Disabilities and the UN International Day of Human Rights, inclusion and the importance of human dignity for all served as prominent themes from start to finish.
