This Women’s World Cup, There’s a New Team That Needs Everyone’s Support

Around 450 million girls around the world are excluded from sport. But we know that sport teaches vital lessons, from perseverance to resilience, confidence, integrity and teamwork among many others. All of which set young people up for life. And when girls are excluded from sports, they are also excluded from learning these lessons.

This FIFA Women’s World Cup there’s a new team to support that is fighting female exclusion from sport.

To mark the tournament, 180 Amsterdam has partnered with NGO Game of Our Lives to launch a new team, She Has Fire, to encourage everyone to sign up to fight for the inclusion of girls in sport.

Game of Our Lives (GOL) is a gamified impact platform where sports stars take on the role of social activists championing a cause alongside their fans. The She Has Fire team is being led by Nadia Nadim, the Danish footballer, doctor and Afghani refugee and supported by England footballers Nikita Parris and Gemma Bonner, Carson Pickett (USA), Savannah De Melo (USA), Wang Shuang (China), Uchenna Kanu (Nigeria) and Thembi Kgatlana (South Africa). 

The team’s launch is being marked by the creation of a new football kit that highlights the hidden lessons girls learn when they play sport. In short, it’s a lesson plan for the world, that happens to be on a football shirt.

The shirt, and accompanying film, have been created to help support the She Has Fire team; to encourage everyone to sign up, pledge their support and also learn how they can help to ensure all girls can play sport, wherever they are in the world. 

Hidden on the design of the football shirt are the ten sport-centric lessons that every girl should have the opportunity to learn through sport. From a distance, the tiny printed lessons look like the shirt’s pattern, an open book. It’s only when you come up close that you can read each lesson.

Dylan Ingham, co-founder of the Game of Our Lives Foundation said, “The FIFA Women’s World Cup this year is a vital moment for women in sports. We need everyone to join She Has Fire to help us end the exclusion of girls in sport and empower the next generation. Because the lessons girls learn on the pitch enable them to become women who lead off it.”

Kika Douglas, CCO of 180 Amsterdam added, “Stepping onto a field or into a meeting room like you belong there is exactly how you convince your doubters that you do. Sport is an essential part of how young people grow but too often girls are shut out of this space. We’re so pleased to have been able to work with a female-led team to create something that will amplify the issue and encourage people to pledge their support to ending the exclusion of girls in sport.”

The 10 lessons hidden on the shirt are confidence, goal-setting, determination, resilience, mental agility, accountability, integrity, clear communications, teamwork and discipline. These lessons, hidden in plain sight, are a social invitation, designed to raise awareness and encourage people to support the fight to end the exclusion of girls from sport. 

A short film, ‘Lessons’, amplifies the She Has Fire launch by detailing each of these lessons and championing the women who support them. It was directed by Iman Whitfield and produced by Eye Force. An accompanying social campaign features the stories of women who have become leaders by playing sport.

Following this July’s event in Australia and New Zealand, the She Has Fire campaign, and shirts, will continue to carry the message into different parts of the world.