A World Cup for the 17 Global Goals
Majken Gilmartin |
TEDxJohannesburg
• November 2018
When Maijken was a little girl she played endless hours of sport with her brothers and local kids, in her native Denmark. She and her co-conspirators made up new rules, and adjusted old ones to fit their own circumstances. Playing sport was about having fun, and developing their confidence. But, once she went to school and joined a club, the all-too-familiar rigid rules that marginalised women and girls set in. For Maijken, sport became more of a men’s game – one that she watched passively on television every Saturday, rather than actively played everyday. It took her 20 years as a feminist activist to successfully rally the Danish government to support efforts to push for a more active image of women in the media. Focusing on football, and inspired by Nelson Mandela’s assertion that “Sport has the power to change the world,” Maijken decided to start her own World Cup, played only by women, according to her own set of rules—ones that brought a higher purpose to playing—where teams scored by taking actions towards the 17 Global Goals, as defined by the United Nations! Her big idea? To use the popularity of the sport to help make the Global Goals famous, and in the process, contribute to the worldwide effort to reach the Goals by 2030.