DADDY x NIKE
Equal Playing Fields For Girls & Young Women
Building the Future Of Youth Sport With Nike & Buntkicktgut
“When girls see other girls play, it makes them feel more confident.”
Aysche (she/her) knows what she’s talking about, having played football since she entered third grade. Born and raised in Neukölln, a neighborhood in Berlin that unites many different cultures and social backgrounds, Aysche recognises the power of football in bringing people together and empowering youth beyond the football field.
Just recently, Mince e.V. – an association doing anti-racist youth work through Black dance cultures – and Outreach Berlin who are doing mobile youth work, hosted an event called Own Your Block in Neukölln which combined football and dance through battles open to kids and teenagers. Both dance and football help young people express themselves through movement and create spaces of exchange, growth and unapologetic joy. Many of these spaces are brought to life by grassroots initiatives, a lot of which Nike has been investing in for decades to create easier access and more opportunities for young people to do sports.
Around the globe, Nike is working with more than forty organisations especially focusing on women’s and girl’s empowerment. There’s the Love The Game programme, launched by Girls United in partnership with Nike to help primary school girls across London create a deep-rooted love for sport early on, combatting the lack of female opportunity and drop-out rates of girls and young women in sports. Then there’s Proyecto Cantera in Mexico City which uses football to support children and young people living in disadvantaged communities or Girls Got Game, a travelling sports camp founded in Manila, Philippines which was designed for girls living in difficult economic conditions. The camp focuses on team sports like football, basketball and volleyball, and conveys key values of teamwork, respect and discipline to its participants. The children also receive mental and emotional training by female role models who share personal stories about their own experiences with sports. In total, Nike reaches over one million young people a year through Social & Community Impact (SCI) programs worldwide.
The importance of representation
How important it is to feel represented, to have role models you can talk to and learn from, is something Aysche realised during her time as a youth coach at buntkicktgut. The Berlin-based youth initiative supported by Nike works with young people in Berlin to create a well-connected and organised street soccer league that invites anyone from the age of eight to come play with a team and collect points.
For those who not only want to show off their skills on the field, buntkicktgut offers a wide range of opportunities to get involved, ranging from schooling to become a street football worker or referee to planning match days, trips and other events. Once a month, all project participants come together at the league council where they find joint solutions to challenges and conflicts through a democratic decision-making process. The project not only fosters social skills like group responsibility or cooperation, but also highlights everyone’s individual strengths and skills within the collective.
Creating spaces where everyone can grow
Aysche, who is now eighteen years old, has embraced the opportunities at buntkicktgut and coaches the younger kids from her neighborhood after school. Transitioning from participant to coach came with its challenges but with time Aysche built up her self-confidence to a point where she can now teach other girls that they can do whatever they set their mind to. “It’s not always an equal playing field for girls in sport, but I’m not letting myself be held back by that anymore”, she says. Especially with the younger girls Aysche has built up strong connections during her time at buntkicktgut and feels proud when she sees them growing more self-assured.
“I enjoy it when I see the children training and learning from their mistakes. I like to motivate them when they are being hard on themselves.” Aysche is able to see herself in the young girls and they’re able to see themselves in her, something that’s not always a given and which makes their bond even stronger. For all of them, buntkicktgut is a place where they feel not only welcome but valued, a place where anyone can join, no matter their background or where they come from.
Grassroot initiatives are shaping the future of youth football
Football is supposed to be for everyone. To many, it is more than just a game – it can be a teacher, a passion, a tradition or a connection to something bigger than oneself. So what does the future of football look like? And how are young people included in that future? In 2024, the German Football Association adopted a reform to make football more “child-friendly” and development-promoting with its main objectives promoting the fun of the game, the individual development of players and adapting the competition to modern pedagogical and sports science findings. It aims to shift away the pressure from achieving results and instead improve the quality and enjoyment for young talents in Germany. While it is a decisive step towards modernising youth football in the country, the coming years will show how effectively they are implemented and what impact they will have.
In the meantime, grassroot initiatives are at the forefront of making football more accessible and inclusive – often with Nike right by their side. The Berlin Football Association (BFV) broke ground in 2019 by becoming one of the first sports organisations in Germany to establish that people who identify as non-binary are free to choose whether they want to play with men or women and that trans people are automatically eligible to play for the team they choose during gender transition. Part of the BFV’s work is the project ALLE KICKEN MIT (Everyone’s Playing) which fosters girl’s football in the capital through summer camps and girl’s days where they get to learn from qualified professionals and take a look behind the scenes of sports management.
“There is power in saying: girls can do better or just as well as the boys, so you have to take me seriously”, Aysche explains. In the future she hopes to be able to train more girls and at some point coach her own team. Each year, Nike supports more than one million young people like Aysche who are shaping the present and future of youth sport. Building a brighter future for youth sports starts with coaching, which is why Nike offers the tools and resources for anyone who wants to empower the youth and help them reach their full potential. Amongst other things this includes helping girls to listen and learn from their bodies, using the right language to help them build confidence, and creating safe and inclusive environments for children of all gender identities, backgrounds, and levels of ability.
No matter the experience, with the right tools and motivation everyone can help shape the future of youth sports – just like Aysche.
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