“Now I am more confident. I know how to protect myself.”
With the support of the European Union, the groundbreaking partnership between the Ministry of Youth and Sports and UNICEF is empowering girls through sports.

- বাংলা
- English
Dhalpur, DHAKA -- “One. Two. Three,” Anannya commands. With each count, the thirteen-year-old punches her tight fists into the summer air. Her black eyes are sharp and focused, her instruction voice soft, yet clear and charismatic.
“One. Two. Three,” repeat other boys and girls who mirror Anannya’s self-defense moves in harmony.
Anannya seems to not notice the sun blazing over the open field. It is her favorite time of the day. At 4 p.m., weaving through the maze of narrow streets in Dhalpur, she leads her neighborhood friends to a nearby field to attend the UNICEF-supported self-defense training. Today, Anannya volunteers to help the trainer demonstrate the techniques herself.
“I like every part of self-defense, its every move!” Anannya exclaims. “I was scared of going outside before, in the evening and even during daylight. I was afraid that boys and men would attack me. Now I am more confident, I know how to protect myself.”
A secret love for sports
Anannya loves sports. She enjoys being outdoors, running, jumping, and simply moving her body. After school, she would play kabbadi1 with friends and forget about any worries or sadness. “This is so nice,” Anannya would declare when stepping into a green field to play sports.
Yet when Anannya first heard about the UNICEF-supported training from her mother, Ranoty Rani, she was skeptical.
“I was nervous about what people would think, what the community would think,” remembers Anannya.
What were once her worries stemmed from growing up in a community where physical exercises were not traditionally seen as ‘fit’ for girls. Many leaders, families and parents would flinch at the idea of girls exercising and practicing sports, let alone learning martial arts for self-defense. Such reluctance does not bode well for the safety of children in the country, where poverty, harmful social norms, and gender inequality are among the factors brewing violent incidents hurting them, especially girls.
“When we try to organize the self-defense training, there are parents who were not supportive,” explains Nasima Aktar, a UNICEF-supported community mobilizer. “Sometimes, the fathers do not want to give the opportunities to their daughters to learn self-defense.”
Nasima is determined to change that reality. Along with other community mobilizers, she spends days and months walking from door to door to get to know each family, conducting surveys to understand their beliefs and behaviors, and delivering awareness sessions to persuade parents otherwise.
When parents are not convinced, she shows them Public Service Announcements on incidents of attacks, rape, or child marriages.
“If this were your daughter, what would you do?” asked Nasima.
Trust in community mobilizers
When Nasima knocked on the door of Anannya’s home, a small room enclosed by walls of rough bricks, Rani had just started shouldering responsibilities for her three children as a single mother after her husband had suddenly died. Working as a cleaner most days, Rani often thought about her children. She felt a pang of guilt: to feed her children and provide them with an education, she could neither spend quality time with them nor ensure that they were safe.
“Our area is not safe for my girls because of some bad people in our local area,” shares Rani.

Along with other parents, Rani participated in sessions with Nasima, which armed her with knowledge of positive parenting, the harmful consequences of child marriage and child labor, and how to better protect her children against harmful violent risks. It was then that she realized the importance of sports and decided to send both of her daughters, Anannya and her elder daughter, fifteen-year-old Nandini, to learn self-defense.
“My perspectives changed after speaking to Nasima. I trust her. I really like the training and think that thanks to it, Anannya can protect herself from bad things,” she adds.

Whenever she can, Rani makes time to visit her daughters at the self-defense training. She is proud. Anannya’s eyes spark confidence and joy, so radiant that everyone can’t help noticing.
“Previously she had no life, only going to school and back home. Now she can easily communicate with others without hesitation. She knows how to raise her voice,” observes Nasima.
I love my mom a lot
“Across Bangladesh, the Sports for Development program, jointly developed by UNICEF and the Ministry of Youth and Sports, which leverages sports to empower children, has reached up to 9 million children in the most vulnerable circumstances,” says Elisa Calpona, Child Protection Manager of UNICEF in Bangladesh.
One among those millions, Anannya has now mastered seven moves and trained 12 other girls who were once afraid of going outside. She becomes even more motivated when she knows that her mother supports her in doing sports.

For this adolescent girl going through the forming years of her life, learning self-defense is not only about herself, but also about her deep love for her mother.
“Sometimes I wonder why unlike other mums, my mother has such a difficult life. With a disability, she struggles so much to work, earn money, buy clothes and food for the family,” shares Anannya. “But when I learn self-defense, I feel that I can protect my mom. And I want to become more established, a doctor one day, so she will no longer have to suffer in the future.”
With each martial arts move, Anannya feels more empowered every day to get closer towards that goal.
[1]: Kabaddi is the national sport of Bangladesh.