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Camán Na Cailíní is a team of committed young women who want to scream to society "COME ON THE GIRLS". We desire to seek change, a change in the minds and hearts of our community, but most importantly, we seek to empower the younger females in our community and to let them know that they are good enough, that they are more than enough. We also want to foster in young girls a life long love of sport. We want to help nurture a relationship between teenage girls and sport that lasts longer than a few transient years. Sport, health and positive mental health and wellbeing go hand in hand. We will endeavour to inculcate a spirit of sport in younger girls and equip them with tools to be the drop out rate!
Our Social Issue
The issue of gender inequality in sport is of particular interest to us. As 15/16 year old girls were are acutely aware of the disadvantages that girls encounter in their sporting life. We perceive and experience a two-tiered system in sport. One where boys enjoy certain privileges and another where girls do not. We feel that while society talks of equality unless you wear the boots of a 16 year old girl, you will never understand how it feels to watch a boy live your dream and to grow up knowing that you are in fact inferior. The fact that 60% of girls drop out of sport at the age of 16 is something that saddens us greatly. We believe that this statistic underpins this inequality.
Why We Chose It
Studies have shown that 1 in 5 girls drop out of sport by the age of 14 in comparison to 1 in 20 boys. We want to help tackle this issue. We chose this topic trough brainstorming ideas among our classmates and also by sending out surveys to our school to see if they also felt strongly about this topic. We felt this idea was very relevant as we attend an all girls school and witness the struggles many girls have to face when competing in sports while trying to balance social, school, physical and mental wellbeing.
Our Goal
Our “big idea” was an action based, three day event, involving 250 fifth and sixth class girls from 5 Clare primary schools. The purpose of this active program was to make our contribution towards increasing the levels of female participation in sports, a prevalent issue globally. (In essence, our inherent ethos was to “stop the drop”). Our unique vision was to bring together these girls in an enjoyable and engaging environment, giving every girl, regardless of ability, opportunities discover a variety of sports and team activities. Our focus was to encourage their understanding of the many values of sport.
Our Innovative Action
To try and prevent girls from dropping out of sport we invited primary schools from Ennis to join us in Colaiste Muire for a fun day full of different sports. We organised games in soccer, camogie, football, dancing and team building for three days. We catered for a girl with mobility issues so we ran a team building group as it would be more suitable for her needs. Everyday we interviewed some sporting stars including some who attend our school. Some of the people we interviewed included Nina Carberry and Deirdre Murphy. We also interviewed some of our own players.
Our Impact
The connections that we forged with Irish politicians and sportswomen was innovative. The girls witnessed strong, successful, intelligent women who they can endeavour to emulate as they grow and mature. These young girls were afforded an opportunity to, and jumped at the chance, to ask these female role models apt and really pertinent questions when they were being interviewed by members of our team. They asked refreshingly honest questions about their lives inside and outside of sport. This experience was both educational and empowering!