We were one of five girl-serving organizations selected to participate in a three-year project with the Essex Women’s Fund called the Resilient Girls Project. 

As part of this project, Beyond Soccer started a collaboration with the Center for Healing and Justice Through Sport and the Youth, Media, and Wellbeing Research Lab at the Center for Women at Wellesley College to evaluate our program’s impact on girls and their resiliency. In line with national trends, we have witnessed a decline in the number of females playing soccer. While we have made efforts to reverse these statistics locally (ensuring girls’ teams are coached by females, more targeted outreach, and continued work with Everyone’s A Player, the Mayor’s Health Task Force, and more), the Resilient Girls Project is beginning to provide us with data-informed insight on what we can do better serve girls not only as Beyond Soccer the organization, but as a member of the girl-serving ecosystem here in Essex County. 

To that end, with #CHJS, we have developed our first curriculum with activities to be incorporated into existing portions of practices and games for our grade 4-12 teams. Our 8-10-week #Beyond Resilient Girls course allows our Coach Mentors to learn, read, and follow weekly messaging with support from the Beyond Soccer team, and it is currently underway this fall!