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Thuba’s Story

Stories of the Girls Opportunity Alliance

April 26, 2023
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A young fairly sized women with deep skin, a small high top curly fro, and a small earing on her left ear holds a soccer ball. She is wearing a red addidas shirt, black adidas pants, and pick purple shoes. The setting is a rocky dirt field with short purple cones on the ground. A few deeper toned young girls with young hair to the side cut out by the frame. There is a rusted goal also cut out on the same side behind them.

Thuba Sibanda has always been passionate about soccer—and she’s using that passion to empower girls on and off the field.

Thuba is a coach and mentor at Physically Active Youth Namibia, an after-school program in Katutura—a township where less than half of girls complete high school. Thuba uses the power of sports to help girls take the lead and stay in school. Thuba’s sports and life skills program “helps students build character, confidence, and discipline. It’s meant to help them find out who they want to be.”

The program also provides academic support, and the results are inspiring: 4 out of 5 young women who participate in the program attend university.

A young fairly sized women with deep skin, a small high top curly fro, and a small earing on her left ear holds a soccer ball. She is wearing a red addidas shirt, black adidas pants, and pick purple shoes. The setting is a rocky dirt field with short purple cones on the ground. A few deeper toned young girls with young hair to the side cut out by the frame. There is a rusted goal also cut out on the same side behind them.

Thuba recently joined us in Johannesburg as one of the 2019 Obama Foundation Leaders: Africa program participants. She told us that she hopes to empower girls for years to come: “I want to help girls achieve their goals in sports and in life.”

“I want to help girls achieve their goals in sports and in life.”
Thuba

You can support leaders like Thuba around the world through the Girls Opportunity Alliance Fund. Opens in a new tab

In this picture, three young girls with different skin tones are shown with magnifying glasses are looking into a cut-in-half bottle of brown water.

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You can support young women around the world through the Girls Opportunity Alliance Fund.

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