Chelsea Signed Shirt

Calling all Chelsea fans

Football is Life as you all know.

Now your favourite club has donated a signed Chelsea shirt to us…to help village girls in rural India for whom Football is quite literally a new life.

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Girls like Gunja (seen heading the ball) were previously pulled out of education and married by the age of 15 because their parents could not afford school fees. Even worse, they disappeared from the playing fields of rural Bihar state where they loved to play football.

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But Gunja no longer fears this fate. Her school fees are paid, she receives daily football training, nutritious meals, extra English and IT classes and competes in tournaments far from her village.
What’s more, when she has finished her schooling she can join a diploma course that guarantees her a job as an ophthalmic assistant at the largest and most successful eye hospital in the state of Bihar : the Akhand Jyoti.

The Akhand Jyoti Football Academy has over 60 girls involved in this scheme. The keenest 20 footballers are resident at the hospital . It costs just £257 per year to pay for each of them.

Bid now for the signed shirt!
Email bids to LucyMathen@Secondsight.org.uk.
Bidding closes end of June 2011.

How many girls can we save from child marriage, premature motherhood, poor health and poverty?
How many can we help become professional footballers (two have already got into the Bihar State team). How many can we help become valued members of staff at a hospital restoring sight to 5,000 blind patients every month?

Said 14 year-old Gunja : “Football is the best thing that has ever happened to me.”