2 Oct 2019
Kick-off for fairness – Indian girls team wins Global Goals World Cup Award
A girls football team from India has brought their Fairtrade and sustainability message to the global stage, winning the award for ‘Best Action towards the Sustainable Development Goals’ at the Global Goals World Cup in New York last week.
Image courtesy of Fairtrade India and Forca Goa Foundation
The Global Goals World Cup leverages the power of football to drive awareness around the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and empowers young girls and women around the world to take action. The competition is not just about scoring goals but also about how the teams and their partners are helping to achieve the SDGs – reflecting the many ways we all can play for a better world.
Representing Forca Goa Foundation, the NGO arm of top Indian Super League football team Forca Goa, the girls only play with Fairtrade footballs and wore Fairtrade certified shirts during the event, as part of their commitment to SDG12 on sustainable production and consumption. The Forca Goa Foundation is the first football organisation in India to make a pioneering commitment to only source and stock Fairtrade certified INDPro footballs, hand-stitched by a community of workers in Jalandhar, India. The shirts came from No Nasties, a Goa-based company and India’s first Fairtrade fashion brand.
Alongside their strong commitment to SDG12, the Foundation is championing good health (SDG3) through football sessions and workshops on nutrition and mental health for thousands of children across Goa, and gender equality (SDG5), working to increase the number of girls and women in football through festivals, women coaches and an exclusive U12 girls league.
Funded by the European Union SWITCH-Asia Program, Fairtrade India aims to build collaborations with other football clubs in the country to promote the SDGs. The organisation is really proud of the Forca Goa Foundation’s commitment to raise awareness about the challenges in the football manufacturing industry and the need to make it fairer.
“The girls team of Forca Goa has been phenomenal in their commitment to supporting the Sustainable Development Goals at the Global Goals World Cup,” said Abhishek Jani, CEO of Fairtrade India. “Not only have they created a huge buzz and raised awareness about these crucial issues – around health, women's empowerment and sustainable consumption and production – which affect all of us; but they are an embodiment of how each one of us can make a significant difference through our individual action and choices. We congratulate the team and the Forca Goa Foundation for the amazing work and look forward to building on our collaboration.”