Moving the Goalposts is a community-based organization located in the rural Kilifi district of Coast Province, in Kenya. It started with a sport and development project in Kilifi in 2001, with less than 100 girls. Now it has more than 3,000 adolescent girls participating in weekly practices, tournaments and ongoing leagues. Participants are encouraged to be active in leadership roles such as committee membership, coaching, refereeing, first aid, and peer educating and counseling. Each week, MTG girls lead peer education sessions on reproductive health and other girls' issues in primary schools in the area. Peer education and counseling is also regularly available at practices and league games.
Recently, MTG has started focusing on developing economic empowerment for girls, including savings projects for out-of-school girls and leadership awards to start small businesses. Currently, MTG is also setting up a project to create income-generation opportunities for girls through distributing papyrus sanitary pads in their region.
Founder Sarah Forde has researched and published a book in 2008, Playing by Their Rules: Costal Teenage Girls in Kenya on Life, Love, and Football, based on the MTG girls' experiences.
"By making our peer educators and counselors available to fellow girls, they open up and share their issues. You get girls who are being raped and they don't want to come out and talk to their teachers or parents because they know that no action will be taken or they will be told that they have bad behavior. Through peer education at MTG we are giving information to fellow girls to be empowered and to speak out."
- Lydia, 24 years old, peer educator and coordinator at MTG