Meeting Rajinder: Dreaming Big

Sat Shri Akal!

My name is Rajinder Kaur. I am 24 years old and I belong to Pasla village. After completing my +2 class, I have been working at YFC Rurka Kalan as a Youth Mentor and Community Coach at a village called Pasla. Since then, I have been coaching 160 children, visited different countries like Germany and attended several international workshops delivered by Generation Amazing and similar international partners – all with the aid of YFC and the Goals for Girls programme. However, my journey did not start smoothly.

My family was living in a Punjabi village called Pasla and was considered rather poor. Back then, my dream after school was to study in a real college. Unfortunately however, the financial background of my family didn´t allow me to join the classes at one of the local universities. Hence, I joined a free of costs computer course at the Computer Center in Rurka Kalan which is part of YFC. While attending the computer course at YFC, I was simultaneously working as a teacher at a private school in my village in order to contribute to my family´s income. After eight months, Pallvi, a friend of mine, told me about a job opportunity as a Youth Mentor at YFC and that I should apply. In the end, I applied and soon afterwards I got a job as a Youth Mentor as part of the Goals for Girls Programme financed by the FIFA in my village´s Government Primary School.

In the beginning, I encountered a lot of problems. On one hand, I didn´t feel confident enough to work together with others and was too shy to speak up in front of kids. I remember, for instance, that my friend who used to visit the computer courses together with me was on leave one day, but I was too shy to attend the class alone, so I stayed at home. However, the job as a Youth Mentor slowly changed me and gave me the opportunity to personally grow. Now, I feel confident to openly talk in front of other persons and I go everywhere on my own. Recently, I could also travel to Mumbai with YFC by airplane - something that was unimaginable back then! I almost daily conduct Sports for Development sessions in schools and have the chance to positively impact the live of so many girls in my village. The topics I focus on include leadership skills, self-esteem and teamwork. Apart from that, the girls I am working with are regularly participating at the Education for Football League Tournaments and successfully play school level matches what offers them the chance to broaden their horizon, too. Often, I realise that the impact of my work is actually far more wide-ranging than you may think of in the first place: my players are very punctual and disciplined, they are cooperative and concerned about hygiene, they go to school and have dreams for their future – and, they have collected money for their own dustbin in class to separate waste!

Another problem I was struggling with a lot in the beginning was that my family did not support me at all when I first started at YFC. Additionally, many local people considered my decision to work as a woman as inappropriate as well. In their conservative mind, girls were not supposed to leave their villages or, to take the role of a leader in society at all. Consequentially, many parents did not allow their girls to join the first sessions out of suspicion and narrow-minded convictions. Due to that, my sessions only counted five to ten participants in the beginning. When I started to talk to the parents and convinced them to allow girls to play, the numbers quickly increased and now I have just started a second team! Another thing that has simultaneously changed since I have started working for the Goals for Girls programme is that people, especially girls from my former village, know me and see me as a sort of positive example for girls. Many people link me to my role at work and my family is now proud that I have chosen to become a Community Coach. The initial suspicion or even rejection of my decision to become a Youth Mentor has finally changed into respect and admiration.

Even though there were many difficulties in the beginning, I do not regret becoming a Coach for YFC for one second and would like to give a message to the girls coming to the ground: “Never stop learning, be confident and live your life in your own way.“

Dhanwad and lots of love,

Rajinder

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This post was originally part of an impact story which documented the lives of participants of a women's empowerment initiative by YFC Rurka Kalan. For more info, see here.