Our work with BT Group: Sport as a pathway to confidence and community
In many parts of India, girls still face barriers to playing sports, accessing technology, and being seen as leaders. The BT Group and the British Asian Trust have been working with Going to School to help adolescent girls grow their confidence, build digital skills, and challenge gender stereotypes in creative ways.
One of the most exciting parts of this work is the Outdoor School for Girls in Bengaluru and Mumbai. Here, the girls have done something incredible. After realising that safe spaces to play football were missing in their communities, they decided to create their own league. They organised matches, formed teams, and trained regularly, building a sense of purpose and pride. This wasn’t just about sport; it became a way for them to speak up, lead, and support one another.
The videos we are sharing below capture the inspiring story of this journey and were aired as episodes on national television in India - DD Chandana (Karnataka) and DD National - with these episodes alone reaching an estimated 2 million viewers.
Watch Episode One: "Making the Field: building a football league for girls"
In 2024, when BT Group CEO Allison Kirkby visited the Outdoor School for Girls, she joined 200 confident girls in conversations on football, coding, and STEM. She saw first-hand how the initiative is unlocking ambition, skills, and agency among young girls. She said: “It’s been quite phenomenal seeing the girls learning coding skills, learning how to play football, and my message to all of them because I was once a little girl is to dream big.”
This is just one story from a much bigger journey. Since 2019, our partnership with the BT Group has empowered over 2.1 million adolescents, most of them girls. Equipped with digital skills, confidence, and opportunity, the girls from our programme not only learn but also utilise digital and real world skills to create solutions to uplift communities and each other.
Watch Episode Two: "Making the Field: building a football league for girls"
