Indian exchange student explains how football changed her life

Radha Kumari, center in green shirt, plays football with Brazilian players during the Laureus Sports Award ceremony in Monaco in Feb. 2019. Kumari received a Good Award with the social project led by NGO Yuwa at the annual event, which celebrates empowerment and achievement through sports. Courtesy of Radha Kumari

By Lee Hae-rin

For 21-year-old Indian college student Radha Kumari, football is a lifesaver.

Kumari, an exchange student at Sungkyungkwan University in Seoul, was able to go on to college after high school thanks to football.

Feeling that she is indebted to the sport, she is trying to help school-age Indian girls find new opportunities through football.

"Football helped me find a better future for myself," Kumari said in a recent interview with The Korea Times.

At the age of nine, she first started to play football "in a rice field without (football) boots, wearing a long skirt," thanks to the help of the non-governmental organization, Yuwa. Founded by American business consultant Franz Gastler in 2007, Yuwa, which means "youth" in Hindi, is an NGO that empowers young Indian women through football and provides opportunities for education and chances for a better life.

"It is not normal for girls to play football or other sports in Jharkhand," Kumari said. "A girl's voice is 'not a thing' and education for women is not considered an investment," Kumari said. The concept of girls playing football was "new" to her family and neighbors, too, she said.

Kumari only came to realize she had been given a different surname from her parents and brother when she went to high school. She paid for her own education by coaching football at Yuwa.

In her hometown in the eastern Indian state of Jharkhand, all unmarried women are given the same surname of "Kumari," which means "maiden."

"Ok, there is a serious, deep-rooted problem in the system, in which women do not have a say in their lives," she said.

In Jharkhand, six out of 10 girls there become child brides, the highest rate of child marriages in the country, according to the state census 2011-12. Only 59 percent of women are literate, significantly lower than the national average of 68.4 percent. Thousands of young women are trafficked among states and become laborers or sex workers.

She earned money to pay her own high school education by coaching younger Indian women in football at the NGO and found the opportunity to overcome deeply entrenched discrimination in her rural village. She learned leadership as a team coach and became a mentor of younger Indian women and shared her experiences and taught them how to manage real-life problems for women, like menstruation.

Radha Kumari, center in red shirt, speaks to younger women about female empowerment through sports during a workshop organized by non-profit organization Atoot in Nepal in August 2022. Courtesy of Radha Kumari

However, football taught her resilience, teamwork and how to tackle real-life problems and navigate her own life path for a "better future."

Through football, she had a chance to study abroad. She majored in business at Spain's Mondragon University with a full scholarship and sponsorship for living and flight expenses. She chose to study business to "solve problems in her community and in the world with entrepreneurship."

Today, 460 girls of varying ages from 15 villages follow Kumari's path along with four dozens of coaches.

After leaving her Indian hometown, she worked to help younger Indian women by creating connections with Europe. She led workshops on how powerful football is to women's empowerment and social inclusion to international football clubs such as La Liga in Bilbao, Spain and sports organizations in Berlin, Germany.

Also in August last year, she organized "Vaani Football Festival" in India, with the sponsorship of one of Spain's biggest youth football competitions, the Donosti Cup. The one-week festival was joined by 500 participants, where she "saw a lot of smiles on their (young Indian women's) faces."

If it was not for football, Kumari believes she would have been married at the age of 16 or 17, as is the case for many other young women in India.

"People's mindsets are too blocked, but I played an important role to change that and I feel very proud about it," she said.

Last year before coming to Korea, she started an initiative called "Vaani," which in Hindi means, "voice." She plans to give a voice to women through football and create a safe environment for women of all backgrounds, languages and cultures to find their path through the initiative.

On her one-year exchange program at Sungkyungkwan University since September last year, Kumari now seeks to bring Korean and international women together to tackle gender discrimination and connect with each other through sports.

Although the type and degree of discrimination differ in Korea from in her home country, Kumari said she learned that Korean women "get less opportunities in the work place due to (gender-based) hierarchy," and, "Women are less in football" here. She said she seeks to meet and work with the Korean female football federation and other women in the sports industry here to make global connections.

She also plans to organize a one-day football championship in Seoul next Saturday, consisting of joint football matches with international and Korean women footballers to share each other's experiences of inclusion, overcoming gender inequality and female empowerment through sports.

The poster for Vaani's one-day football championship to be held next Saturday / Courtesy of Radha Kumari

"The power of football is connecting people and this sense of togetherness is very strong. … I believe there should be more of this kind of work where people use sports for good reasons," she said.