About Kibera Girls Soccer Academy
Kibera Girls Soccer Academy (KGSA) provides a free, holistic high school education to 150 girls in Kibera, Kenya. The school emphasizes leadership and character development through extracurricular activities and employs university- trained teachers, setting it apart from other schools in Kibera.
Kibera is the largest informal settlement in Africa. It is a diverse and vibrant community full of caring and hardworking individuals and families. However, Kibera faces many challenges including high unemployment, poverty, overcrowding, and insecurity. It is underserved by health, education, and sanitation services and many homes do not have reliable access to water and electricity.
Kibera’s schools face
overcrowding, undereducated teachers, and high teacher attrition, The
schools lack the resources to provide necessities including school
lunch, water, and sanitary pads. Due to high costs of school fees and
materials, many students cannot afford to go to school. For the few
families that can afford to send their children to school, young boys
and men take priority over girls and women.
Through financial and technical resources, the KGSA Foundation supports KGSA’s academic programming in addition to nutrition, health care, extra-curricular and leadership initiatives along with higher education scholarships for graduates to unlock potential, expand opportunities, and enable each girl with the ability to shape her future.
About the Author
Ellie Roscher
Ellie Roscher was taken by Rose's story right away when she heard it while teaching a gender equity unit to high schoolers in 2010. She traveled to Kenya in 2012 and 2013 to interview Rose and the other students at KGSA, which became the book Play Like a Girl.
Ellie is also the author of The Embodied Path, 12 Tiny Things, and How Coffee Saved My Life. She holds an MFA in writing from Sarah Lawrence College and an MA in theology from Luther Seminary. She teaches writing, yoga, and embodiment in Minneapolis and online.
Find out more at ellieroscher.com and @ellieroscher.
About the Illustrator
Lily Banning
Lily Banning is a visual artist whose varied portfolio includes oil paintings, illustrations, public murals and textiles. She is an alumna of Washington DC’s 202Creates residency program and was a featured panelist at the Emerging Arts Leaders Symposium in 2017.
Her work has been exhibited at the Hill Center Gallery, Watergate Gallery and Torpedo Factory in the Washington, D.C. area and Universita’ Ca’ Foscari in Venice, Italy. Lily lives in Portland, Oregon with her husband and pup.
Follow along @art.lilyb and www.lilybanning.art.
