CEO Ummul Choudhury on International Women’s Day

“Volunteering in a girl’s prison in Damascus in 2009 I, for the first time, met young women whose every history included sexual abuse, and/or rape. It was there, that I also saw how sport, music, play can touch a broken girl’s life, and let her see that her body is her own.

I realised then I couldn’t fix all I wanted to fix about the lives of these girls, but I could bring hope, new skills and an ability to have control over their own bodies.

It was in 2009 that I became a co-Founder of Capoeira4Refugees. Within our mandate, there has always been a passion for working with women. However hard that has many times proven to be.

On International Women’s Day, I’d like to emphasise the necessity of continuing to reach out to women and girls through sport. Through working with women in the context of the Middle East especially, we can affect real change in moving towards peace and furthering gender equality.”