SportWorks TALKS: From Afghanistan to Europe. Soccer as a tool to empower girls and women from all backgrounds

The soccer field is huge, but is it welcoming everyone?

This is what Nagin Ravand, footballer and coach, has set out to challenge. She wants to enlarge the doors of this sport so girls and women from all backgrounds realize that they are able to enter and feel free to be part of it.

Nagin was three years old when her family had to flee from Afghanistan because her father was a highly exposed journalist who spoke up for people’s rights.

They started a new life in Denmark, and something that would have been unlikely in Kabul happened naturally: a friend invited her to join a soccer training session. She instantly fell in love with soccer.

Nagin has been playing soccer since first grade. So when she moved to another city at the age of 15, the first thing she did was look for the female soccer team in her area, but to her surprise, there was none.

For this reason, she instinctively created the first girls’ team, and they gathered more than 40 girls from all backgrounds during the first three years.

Since then, she has not stopped leading projects to promote inclusion and diversity through soccer. Nagin has won several awards in recognition of her work with the community and has become a positive role model for women and girls.

Her dream is to coach the Afghan women’s soccer team.

Want to learn more about how Nagin is breaking barriers and challenging the rules of the game? Don’t miss our next SportWorks TALK: “From Afghanistan to Europe. Soccer as a tool to empower girls and women from all backgrounds.