Through Força Foundation's second layer of key enablers, our leaders, we work within local communities through a combination of actions implementing our key strategies: empowering girls and changing social norms in local communities. To empower girls, conditions that allow for girls to exercise their rights, agency and choice need to be in place, in order for action towards girls' empowerment to have long term impact.
Therefore, our leaders work with involving the local community, to engage them in our work towards empowering girls. This is done by building relationships and trust with girls' family members and others in the local community based on the principle of openness, allowing for non-judgmental communication and behaviour, and the belief in the good intentions of girls' families and others in their local communities to do what is best for girls in that community.
By doing so, our leaders work with changing current social norms that limit girls' development, in order to instead develop social norms that promote and enhance girls' empowerment and development. Naturally, since we work with leaders within their local communities, many leaders might upon engaging with the Força Foundation hold values and attitudes influenced by the current social norms in their community that are harmful to girls. Therefore, the first step towards changing social norms in local communities is aligning our leaders with our values, vision and mission, before leaders can be enabled with knowledge and tools to work with changing social norms within their communities. The change of social norms starts in relation to and within football, and can through football influence social norms in society in general.