Soccer Balls Kick-Start Afghan Peace and Prosperity
Esta inscrição foi selecionada como finalista no desafio
Gamechangers: Change the Game for Women in Sport.
Encourage girls to make their soccer-ball purchases count by buying balls hand-stitched by poor, widowed Afghan women.
Sobre Você
Informação de Contato
Title
Ms.
First name
Marla
Last name
Gitterman
Your job title
Program Director
Name of your organization
Bpeace
Organization type
Non-profit 501 C 3
Annual budget/currency
$540,000
Mailing address
Bpeace
5 E. 22nd Street
Suite 9J
New York, NY 10010
Telephone number
212-696-9696
F-a-x number
212-696-9699
Country
Estados Unidos
Website
Email address
Alternative email address
Localização
Project Street Address
7221 sarak awal, Karte-char, house-seh. 7221 first street, Karte-char, 3rd district. Kabul, Afghanistan
Project City
Kabul, Mazar
Project Province/State
Kabul, Dai Kundi and Balkh
Project Postal/Zip Code
Kabul
Project Country
Afeganistão
Sua ideia
Choose your sport: (check all that apply)
Soccer/Football
If you chose "other" for Sport, please define in 1-2 words below
What approach does your initiative incorporate?
Product
Year the initiative began (yyyy)
2007
Paste your video code here:
If your project has a website, paste the web address here:
Plot your innovation within the discovery framework:
Barrier
Social stigmas and prohibitions
Insight
Make the first step easier
This field has not been completed.
Dê um nome ao seu projeto
Soccer Balls Kick-Start Afghan Peace and Prosperity
Describe Your Idea
Encourage girls to make their soccer-ball purchases count by buying balls hand-stitched by poor, widowed Afghan women.
INOVAÇÃO
What is your signature innovation, your new idea, in one sentence?
Encourage girls to make their soccer-ball purchases count by buying balls hand-stitched by poor, widowed Afghan women.
How many people does your innovation serve or plan to serve? Exactly who will benefit?
In year 1, 12,000 girl soccer players, 12,000 parents and 600 coaches will benefit by knowing they are making a difference with their ball purchases.
In year 1, 150 Afghan family members will benefit with sustainable income coming into their families.
By 2015, 1 million girl soccer players, 1 million parents, 50,000 coaches will benefit knowing they are making a difference with their ball purchases.
By 2015, 12,000 Afghan family members will benefit with sustainable income.
Do you have any existing partnerships? If so, please list and describe.
The U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Educational and Cultural Exchanges provided seed funding to bring three Afghan women soccer-ball manufacturers to the U.S. in October 2008 to meet with potential partners.
LeadDog Marketing, an award-winning marketing agency specializing in brand promotions, sports marketing, events, grassroots, experiential and cause-related marketing, signed on to create the logo and soccer ball designs on a pro-bono basis.
Beyond the 11th provided funding for the Afghan women entrepreneurs to build their capacity with equipment and raw materials, and thereby create additional employment and ramp up to increase their soccer ball production. Beyond the 11th is a non-profit organization that provides support to widows in Afghanistan who have been affected by war, terrorism, and oppression.
In which sector do these partners work? (Check all that apply)
Citizen sector (non profits, NGOs) , Private sector , Public sector (government).
How do you implement your innovation and apply it to the challenge/problem you are addressing?
In Afghanistan, income-producing roles for women are extremely limited. Only 21% of Afghan women are literate. Over two million Afghan widows, mostly caused by war, have little work experience and are often forced to beg as their only source of income.
Bpeace has united three female Afghan entrepreneurs who already had a track record of individually training and employing hundreds of otherwise unskilled Afghan women to hand stitch high-quality soccer balls. Aziza, Farishtah and Taj run soccer ball manufacturing businesses and provide safe, home-based jobs for their workers, all women--many of whom are widows. By stitching 500 soccer balls, a woman can earn enough income to support her family for a year and send her children to school. The sale of 1 million balls a year, will provide sustainable income to 2,000 women workers, and have a positive poverty-alleviating impact on their 14,000 Afghan family members.
Impacto
Provide one sentence describing your impact/intended impact
Girl players will expand their social consciousness and thousands of Afghan families will have sustainable livelihoods leading to education and hope.
What does impact/success look like? Please list any tangible measures of the impact of your innovation
--The Dosti soccer ball brand gains quantifiable visibility through publicity and web-based marketing.
--Outreach to leagues results in coaches recommending the benefits of purchasing Dosti soccer balls.
--12,000 Dosti balls are sold in year one, providing income to 150 Afghan family members.
--50,000 balls are sold in year two, proving income to 600 Afghan family members.
--By 2011, the Dosti brand has expanded outside the U.S. to Europe and Asia.
--By 2015, one million balls are sold a year, providing income to more than 12,000 Afghan family members.
--The Afghan women who stitch the balls are able to feed their families, send their children to school, and provide their communities with the opportunity for a more peaceful and stable future.
Is there a chance that your project could change policy (within an institution or government)?
It already is on track to do so. The three Afghan women entrepreneurs who visited the U.S. in October 2008 gained new awareness of the importance of ensuring that girls under 16 years old are not stitching the balls. They have already drafted procedures to ensure compliance with their own code of child-labor practices, since Afghanistan does not have such a code. One of the entrepreneurs—Aziza—is a leader within the Afghan Women’s Business Federation (AWBF)—a membership organization of more than 3,500 women. She will bring this issue to the AWBF, which will in turn bring it to the Afghan Ministry of Women’s Affairs. The government of Afghanistan has many rules of law issues. The Dosti partners will put child labor into the hopper.
Entrepreneurial business, like Dosti, hits at the core of a sustainable economy and civil society, by fostering self-esteem, motivation, imagination, ownership, hope, contribution and service.
Aside from financial sustainability, how do you plan to grow the initiative or expand your intended impact?
Bpeace has a track record for generating excellent publicity and marketing effectiveness. Together with LeadDog, we will bring the Dosti story across the U.S. Every 500 balls we help sell, provides income to lift an Afghan family out of poverty with better nutrition, education and hope for the future.
Temas relacionados à inscrição
SUSTENTABILIDADE
How is your initiative financed (or how do you expect your initiative will be financed)?
The U.S. travel and capacity building has been partially financed by the U.S. Department of State, the non-profit Beyond the 11th, and individual donors to the non-profit Business Council for Peace (Bpeace). Bpeace is seeking foundation and grant support to provide on-the-ground consulting to the entrepreneurs in Afghanistan and to subsidize shipping costs until economies of scale kick-in to make container shipping possible.
Financing source
Annual budget
$80,000 in cash to cover costs in Afghanistan. This is amplified by the $250,000 in donated time and services of volunteers and pro-bono services
Annual revenue generated
N/A
Number of staff (full-time, part-time, volunteers)
One full-time staff in Afghanistan, 0.5 full-time staff in U.S., 28 volunteers.
What are the main barriers to financing your initiative, and how do you plan to address these barriers?
The U.S. recession necessitates a shift from fundraising among individuals to foundation and corporate support. We are ramping up our outreach to foundations to make the case for Dosti, a project that can be self-sustaining in 18 months with an excellent ROI (return on involvement).
What are the major challenges with regards to partnerships?
Major challenges are to keep an efficient communition flow and to keep everybody engaged and on the same time-line, especially as so many of the key players in the Dosti venture are volunteers and life tends to get in the way.
A História
What stage is your project?
Ongoing project .
What was the motivation or defining moment that led to create this innovation? Tell us the story.
In December 2006, Bpeace launched a business plan competition to recruit Afghan women entrepreneurs for its three-year Fast Runner business development program. Applications for the expected businesses in food processing came in. But surprisingly, three Afghan soccer-ball manufacturers applied. Bpeace volunteers started to peel back the onion on this concentration and found that under the Taliban, Afghan families who fled to Pakistan had learned to stitch soccer balls in refugee camps and brought back the skill to Afghanistan. Bpeace believed if it could unite the three independent applicants under one export brand, it could make a U.S. market for the soccer balls and exponentially expand these three separate businesses, creating significant additional employment, and hope for thousands of Afghan families.
Bpeace invited Taj, Aziza and Ferishta into the Bpeace program and spent a week with them in Dubai in November 2007, in partnership with Dubai Women’s College. There Bpeace volunteers seeded the vision of an export brand, and left it to Taj, Aziza and Ferishta to see the possibilities. By the end of the week, they had bonded and agreed to find a way to work together.
Please tell us about the social innovator behind this initiative
There is not just one innovator behind Dosti. Bpeace co-founder Toni Maloney first saw the possibility of uniting Aziza, Taj and Ferishta’s soccer manufacturing entities under one export brand. Beyond the 11th believes in the power of helping Afghan widows provide for themselves. The U.S. Department of State invested in bringing the Afghans to the U.S. to explore their potential. And LeadDog Marketing provides the landing gears by marketing Dosti soccer balls in the U.S.
(Optional) To be eligible for an additional prize, please select age range
27 or older
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Comentários
Dear Ms. Marla Gitterman,
Congratulations! On behalf of Nike and the Ashoka's Changemakers team, we are honored to declare you a winner of the Second Early Entry Prize for the “Gamechangers: Change the Game for Women in Sport” collaborative competition! We hope that by submitting your innovation early, you have benefited from the online discussion and have acquired some valuable feedback and insight towards your initiative.
Please remember that your selection as an Early Entry Prize winner does not preclude you from winning the competition in any way, or guarantee finalist status—all entries will be equally evaluated per the Changemakers criteria at the completion of the entry period. We will follow up with you after the holidays about the shipment of your prize.
Again, Congratulations and have a wonderful holiday season!
Best wishes,
The Changemakers Team
January 26, 2009
Hello Marla,
What a great entry!
Do you see possibilities of influencing public policy with the reconstruction of Afeganistan in a way that would favour girls and women in sports?
Also Women Win would like to invite you to join their group on the competition.
Women Win is the first ever international women’s fund that supports sport and physical activities as instruments for social change and women’s empowerment.
Women Win will use the competition to find a fellow between the ages of 15 and 65 years old that positively change the lives of women and girls in their community through sports.
Please go to http://sportforchange.changemakers.net/en-us/group/womenwin and click at Join the group. After that visit the topics being discussed and leave your opinion.
Women Win is looking forward to hearing your stories and progress.
Congratulations!
Congratulations for winning the early entry prize. Your innovation is fantastic and good luck in the rest of the competition!
Congrats Bpeace! I love this idea and look forward to hearing more...
Stephani
Nike
What is encouraging about this model is that it builds on some of the already established and accepted, women created/supported markets. It encourages a multi-generational support of older women's crafts and economic independence in a place where is it is much needed.
I hope your entry goes all the way - GOAL!
Donna Quadri
Hi Marla,
What a fascinating story-how Bpeace facilitated the meeting of these three women and the eventual business launch of their soccer ball manufacturing business! It addresses so many of the barriers facing Afghani women. You mention that procedures are being put in place to assure that child labor is not used. Can you tell us more about this process and how this will be monitored?
Thanks and good luck,
The Gamechangers Judges’ Panel
Thank you for your question. There are two procedures the women will put in place to assure that child labor is not used. First, the group company, Dosti, will comply with the rules and regulation of the Monitoring System of the Ministry of Labor and Social Affaires regarding child labor issues. Second, they will ask their workers to sign a form agreeing to comply with child labor rules such as: All workers should be 16 years old or above; all workers should hold a valid National ID card to prove their age. If a worker is found with a fraudulent ID card, he/she will be let go and not allowed to work for another 2 year with this company; workers are subject to unannounced, periodic inspection of their workplace to make sure children are not working. These inspections are conducted by the Ministry of Labor and Social Affaires; a worker knowingly recommends someone under the age of 16, she will be suspended for 6 month from working with this company.
I hope this answers your question.
Best,
Marla
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