Tuesday, December 8, 2015

A female boxing club in Lyari,Pakistan... Empowering Women through Sports!

A Female Boxing Club In Lyari, Pakistan... Empowering Girls Through Sports 

Pakistan has produced some outstanding sports personalities over the last few decades... but most of them are Men, why? It is a country with some outstanding women authors, politicians, singers, media personalities... then why just a few prominent sports women? Mainly due to restricted resources and social clichés. 

There are very few female training camps and gyms for female athletes in the country. These are mostly located in the bigger cities and are generally quite expensive. Last month a NY times article on a girls boxing facility in Lyari, Karachi caught my attention. Sanam Maher"s article explains the vision behind the first boxing training camp in Lyari. 

They are part of the first-ever official training program in Pakistan to teach women how to box. The First Women Boxing Coaching Camp has been organized by the Sindh Boxing Association (SBA) in Lyari, Karachi, a neighborhood known for two things: gang violence and sports stars, particularly footballers and boxers, including Olympian Syed Hussain Shah.
It all started when a 16-year-old girl, Khadijah, approached the 2013 Sindh boxing champion and resident of Lyari, Nadir Kachi, and asked him to train her. She wanted to learn to box, but couldn’t find any club willing to teach her. All the girls she knew used to watch videos of matches or training sessions and practice in their homes. They had no way of competing, as no inter-club, district, provincial, or national-level boxing fights are held for women in Pakistan.
Nadir took Khadijah to his coach, Younis Qambrani. “I have been training my daughters to box since they could put on a pair of gloves,” explained Qambrani, whose family includes several gold medalists in the sport. Qambrani started including Khadijah in those training sessions. A few days later, another girl showed up asking for training, having heard of Khadijah’s sessions. Word spread and before he knew it, Qambrani had 13 girls in his home, all wanting to become boxers. At that point, the coach knew he had to find a space and an official program for them."
Sanam Maher and her husband Mustafa Abbasi along with the club officials are raising awareness for this initiative. When I contacted them they informed that the idea for a female boxing club will be a pass time for local girls as well as giving confidence to the girls. 


"The club started out with 17 girls who wanted to learn how to box and who are  from families that have a background in sports, so they were naturally inclined to be interested in the game."

"The Sindh Boxing Association received some seed money from the government for the  10-day training camp - Rs150,000. The organisers are still lobbying for further government support and funds."

 When I asked them what is their vision for future, they replied 

"To train the girls to compete at national- and eventually international-levels. The  girls have to start out competing at inter-club level (there is a sister club set up in  North Karachi, so girls from these two clubs can fight each other), before moving  on to district levels and so on. The coach also wants to train some of the girls to  be referees and umpires or coaches so other girls and women may have access  to the  sport."
Look out for future international female boxing champions from Pakistan. Any amount of donation and a great deal of appreciation is needed for this project. 

Wednesday, December 2, 2015

Hobby of yesterday/ great profession of today


WHAT USED TO BE A HOBBY OF YESTERDAY IS A HIGH PAYING JOB OF TODAY

Growing up my Grandfather"s advice to me and my siblings was :

"Parho gey likho gey to bano gey Nawab aur kheloy gey kudo gey to hi gey kharab "

( if you study hard you will become an honorable person , if you just play you will waste your time ).......

It's true our grandparents generation thought that there are few decent, financially secure professions like law,medicine, banking, engineering, teaching, business or civil service. Everything else like sports, designing,entrepreneurship, cooking or broadcast journalism is just a past time hobby or a side job and it cannot be a full time career.

Most of us  agreed with that notion in the 70s but now 35 years later... No way! Time has changed. When I look around I see basket ball players and golfers becoming millionaires  ; getting admissions quite easily in Ivy League colleges courtesy of their sports credits. Many young twenty year old athletes earning a six figure salary.

In the world of today being a good sportsman could get you popularity all over the world and make you rich very easily and very quickly . What people thought earlier was to work hard, study and make money. Sports were something to relax. It was never actually considered a serious profession until the end of the 20th century when sports like baseball , tennis , cricket and rugby started to change the logic.