Promoting women’s sports, specifically women’s football ⚽️!

Growing up, sports wasn't a safe space for me. 

So, I created 14thgunner and made a community.

I saw that there's a huge gap between men’s and women’s sports mainly in terms of media coverage, support and obviously payment. 

14thgunner is working on closing this gap by exposing more people online to women’s sports, specifically women’s football. 

Football is a globally loved sport. FIFA estimates that 5 billion people love football so my audience is almost a third of the world’s population and counting!

14thgunner focuses on the supporting side, mainly in Africa since support is the main step of the growth of women’s sports.

In Kenya, it’s still “odd” to see a girl playing football, let alone playing well. I’m currently breaking this barrier by showing everyone that it is possible and normalising it so more young girls can safely get into sports!

14thgunner is available on Tik Tok, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter and LinkedIn!

I post football content, specifically football freestyling, to show that girls can play football and can do it extremely well too. I’m making my audience aware that they can also watch women’s sports and sharing platforms and/or sites where they can watch from.

My audience often receives a point of view of female athletes, the struggles they go through, the type of people they are and the undying love and passion they have to share! Apart from this, I’ve made a case brief for a program called Civics Unplugged titled, “Tapping Into Women’s Sports Potential”, where I shed light on main issues female athletes face and explain what needs to be changed. 

The change mainly starts with the support, with support more people would watch their games therefore more revenue comes in. That revenue can then be invested into their facilities, medical staff and all the necessary things they need to improve.

I've shared my case brief with sports organisations, mainly female athletes focused like Togethxr, Women In Football, Just Women’s Sports, etc. 

I'm doing this so that my voice and opinions can be heard because I believe they matter.

https://linktr.ee/14thgunner

I have inspired various people, young and old, to get more involved in the sports they like, whether it's watching athletes play or trying out a sport! This November, the World Freestyle Football Association, WFFA, are having their World Final in Kenya. This will lead to having more people getting into football freestyling from Kenya and neighbouring countries! 

In June, the WFFA will be having the Pulse Series in Mombasa, which is basically the Africa Competition to find 1 best female and male football freestyler who will proceed to the World Final in Nairobi. 

I contacted WFFA in September 2022 requesting them to collaborate with 14thgunner to have a small football freestyle event in Kenya to promote the sport. I’m still speaking with WFFA and I will also be participating as a football freestyler!

Football freestyle is a small but rapidly growing sport. I believe it needs to be known for its art due to self expression, it boosts confidence and it keeps you healthy and happy plus the global community is extremely kind and welcoming!

This is one of my steps of improving the lives of potential athletes, not only female athletes especially Kenyans since FIFA had banned us from football competitions for a while but before the unban we could still use football freestyle as an outlet.

14thgunner always finds various ways to create an impact and I’m striving for a larger impact!

As I said at the start, 14thgunner is a community. 

I do my best to connect to each and every person who reaches out to me, whether it's a comment or a message. I’ve advised a lot of people on how to improve in football, helped them find football clubs to join in Kenya and I have weekly lives/streams on Tik Tok (Wednesday) and Instagram (Friday) to truly connect and talk to them for an hour.

I’ve met strangers who are now my teachers in football freestyle, strangers who became friends that I talk to almost daily, strangers who became some of my biggest motivators and fans as shocking as it may sound. 14thgunner is a developing family that I love.

I’m planning to get out of my comfort zone and try something new. Shooting for the moon really. I’ve seen the benefits of being selected as a solver, the one that stands out to me is the exposure in media and at conferences. My voice and opinions need to be heard as a fan, a possible future professional athlete, a current athlete and as someone who believes in equality and equity.

Honestly, all the other benefits are really good too, the money could be used to invest in filming equipment and video editing software so I can upgrade my content to gain a larger audience. 

Solve seems like it generally has high tech official businesses that make some serious revenue but I believe that I bring ambiguity to this wonderful challenge. 

14thgunner are simple social media accounts that started as an Arsenal women Twitter fan page and now is a trailblazing community! :)

My project is based on using social media to reach my target audience, the youth.
The youth are the future so if they have or gain interest in women’s sports now, in the future people watching female athletes play their specific sports would be normal and it would be required to have their games streamed since everyone would be used to it.

By next year, I hope broadcasting channels like DStv will have channels not only one to stream women’s football. Having one channel to stream at least 2 different women’s football leagues is a problem since matches happen around the same time so people often miss one game since they only have one channel. The weird thing is that they have 7 free sports channels that don’t stream anything everyday since early 2023. Hopefully they have a plan to broadcast more women’s sports games/matches so that other broadcasting services can compete with them and also stream more matches/games. I gave the example of DStv because it is one, if not the most known and used broadcasting company in Africa.

In 5 years, I want to see less discrimination or no discrimination at all that prevents young girls from getting into sports they like. No judgement but more support towards them.

Hopefully by then people would be used to seeing women play various sports on TV so young girls will get inspiration from that and wonder, “if she can do it, I can do it too”.

I’m holding DStv and other broadcasting companies accountable when they don't accommodate streams for women’s sports. TV broadcasting is the start, then I will move to newspaper articles. When a sports article is made about a female athlete, it takes up only 1-2 pages and the other 5-7 pages is full of male athletes which is quite unfair.

It’s hard to measure since I don’t have accurate readings or recording but I believe when I see everyone not only girls posting about women’s sports is when I know progress is made. The more posts I see, the larger the audience becomes, the more interest is put into women’s sports and growth continues! When I hear people talking about women’s sports it is also important because it can lead to people researching more on the female athletes.

People follow me, my audience grows, I keep them update on women’s sports achievement, ongoing or upcoming tournament, issues they face etc, the get used to seeing updates on female athletes, they slowly gain interest and possibly asking how to watch the games/matches, increase in viewers in broadcasts, more revenue is made that can be invested into women’s sports, improvement is seen in women’s sports, the audience grows because of this, more revenue and investments and finally more growth.

This is basically an endless cycle for me, the growth doesn’t have a limit so it's ongoing!

Social media platforms, Tik Tok, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter and LinkedIn so far; software editing platforms like CapCut and my phone to record raw content. 

I record myself making football content, then go to CapCut to be creative and add music, edit it to whatever seems entertaining and finally posting this content on social media platforms for my audience to see.

I’m the only person working on 14thgunner but I keep my audience updated on various female athletes from all over the world and use music from different cultures to stay diverse. 

I also interact with 14thgunner friends who come from multiple different countries!

14thgunner is currently not a business but a community. 

Impact is created mainly on future and current athletes.

Future athletes are getting inspired to take part in sports. This is beneficial to them since sports has a lot of benefits from raising one’s confidence, improving mental health, gaining social skills etc. 

Current athletes are getting more support, increase in their wages, slowly but surely getting the respect they deserve etc.

At the moment, my only little source of money is from Tik Tok lives where community members gift me and from participating in a football freestyle competition where I got awarded for being 2nd Best Female Football Freestyler in Kenya.

By participating in competitions like this, although money is not the main thing in my mind, the impact is my main focus.

When I started 14thgunner, it was and still is for fun, as long as I’m having fun, money is not the main factor.

If I keep on getting money from competitions like this or football freestyle competitions or my Tik Tok live gifts, I will surely invest it back into 14thgunner. As I mentioned before, purchasing a quality camera to improve my content and maybe start vlogging on YouTube, getting a tripod so my phone stops failing when I’m live on Instagram and Tik Tok and getting proper lighting equipment so my content and my lives are clear to my audience! These are just a few purchases that I’m working on getting as soon as possible. 

I’m contacting brands to see whether I could work with them, mainly brands that share a common goal with 14thgunner.