What lessons has your life journey taught you?

Fatima | Kirikiriroa

Fatima shares how her mother’s sacrifices and community support inspired her to pursue sport and create a safe, empowering space for other Muslim girls.

“Football has given me an opportunity to express myself as a person – how far I can achieve, what I can achieve and who I can inspire. My mum used to live in Afghanistan, right. But then she left to go to Pakistan to have a better life for us. But then, some circumstances changed. My father passed away. My brother passed away. So we weren’t really having a great life there. And my studies weren’t that high level either. So my mum was like, ‘We need to go somewhere else.’

She sacrificed everything for us to get here. The things that she’s gone through for us – no one can imagine. The pain that she had to suffer.

She did not agree with me playing sport or football at all. But now, seeing how everyone’s so supportive of me, and how she sees me working hard towards my goal, she’s like, “Okay, make me proud.” So that’s my goal – to make her proud.

It’s not easy as a Muslim woman to play sport. But my community have been very, very supportive of me. Even with financial barriers, they support me and try to make things as easy as possible so I could reach my goals.

My goal is to open my own academy and have Muslim girls just like me have a place where they can feel safe. Like a second home for them. Where they can feel a sense of belonging and be comfortable and confident and enjoy. It makes me happy seeing other people be inspired and do things that they thought they couldn’t. So it just makes me happy.”