Mariah Madiha Naz Jakhro, 20
GA Youth Advocate, Thatta - Pakistan
“My purpose is not only success for me, but whenever I have success I pass it on to different girls in my community. I make a route for them, open a door for them to walk through and go on to make their own dreams come true”.
“You work hard, you make money, that’s not life. When you realise that someone’s life has changed because of you, that is the purpose of life,” says Madiha Naz Jakhro, 20, proudly. Hailing from Thatta, Pakistan, Madiha is a Generation Amazing Foundation (GA) youth advocate and one of our one million beneficiaries.
Madiha has spent the last nine years of her life dedicated to sports, educating young women, and building inclusivity in her community. Only twenty years old herself, she is part of the next generation of young Pakistani women who are working towards achieving key developmental goals in their country, such as gender parity and access to education. And she is doing so through the power of sport.
From a very young age, Madiha has been an avid lover of all sports. “My father played football and so I just love football. I also play volleyball and cricket, but they’re not as lucky for me as football – football gave me an opportunity to show my skills and who I am to the world”.
Most of the population of Thatta belongs to rural areas, where many young girls don’t have access to primary education. And even when they do, Madiha explains, girls don’t participate in after-school sports because there are no grounds or facilities where they can play safely and freely, a reality that is common across different regions of Pakistan.
Unlike many other girls in her community, Madiha has had the support of her family. “My family is not educated, and they did a lot of work to help educate us. My mother paid some fees for us at the university level. I was the first girl to go to university in my community, in my whole family,” she explains.
A real turning point for Madiha came in 2014, the year she first met our Generation Amazing team.
“As girls, we didn’t have any grounds or places to play outside of school. Then Generation Amazing came in 2014, gave me a chance to express my concerns, and built us a safe, private ground to play football,” explains Madiha.
These grounds represented a safe space for women to enjoy sports without the interference of boys and men. They also became a centre point in Madiha’s life.
Just four years after GA built the grounds, Madiha, equipped with the tools she gained as a youth advocate, decided to use those grounds to open the first women’s club in Thatta. It’s a place where girls and young women can learn how to play football, partake in workshops on gender equality and even take educational classes ranging from biology to English.
“It was a big decision for me, and I faced a lot of harassment and intimidation… but I would tell myself, Madiha, you can do it, and so I did. I opened the academy and people were shocked. And now all the boys are accepting this club, and we even play some matches together,” says Madiha. “When I started the club, we had just five members, now it’s 200, all from different areas and communities. You do this not only for yourself, you do it for other girls”.
For Madiha, the academy meant that girls in her community had a gated space to play football and other sports away from the boys who would often ridicule or harass them; a place where they could gather and freely partake in activities that were traditionally reserved for men.
