Josa Started It - Josa started a girls’ football team and community keep-fit

Jul 17, 2026

Josa’s story follows her lifelong love of football and her determination after a head teacher refuses girls’ participation in the school team. Despite the setback, she argues for change and organizes a girls’ football team with mixed ages, raising funds for kits as “The Lionesses.” As participation grows, some girls shift to running, forming “The Running Lionesses,” while married women lead music-based keep-fit with babies (“Keep-Fit with Cubs”). The community later mobilizes to improve the village health clinic, funding repairs and new equipment.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryLifestyle

FormatPDF

Pages18

Reading Time28 min

AccessFree to download

Josa’s passion for football

Rejection from the school team

Creating a girls’ football team

The Lionesses, Running Lionesses, and Keep-Fit with Cubs

Raising funds for the health clinic

Josa Started It English Community Living Josa Started It Written by Carol Smith Images by Anna Grove. English United Kingdom Copyright © 2020, SIL Cameroon [http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/)[ ](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/)[You may not use this work for commercial purposes. You may](You may not use this work for commercial purposes. You may)[ ](You may not use this work for commercial purposes. You may)adapt and add to this work, but you may distribute the resulting work only under the same or similar license to this one. You must keep the copyright and credits for authors, illustrators, etc. Images by Anna Grove, © 2020 SIL Cameroon. CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. This book is part of the SIL Cameroon Branch Mother Tongue Based Multilingual Education 5th year reading curriculum. Josa Started It Josa had always played football with her brothers. She had always listened to the football games on the radio. She loved playing football and was a very good player. The boys asked her to join the school footballteam, and to play in the next match against the school from the neighbouring village. The head teacher said,“NO.” He said that girls were not allowed in school teams. It made Josa sad that she couldn’t play in the school team, but she was very determined to continue to play football. Her father explained that it was alright for her to still play football with the boys for fun, but it wasn’t good for girls and boys to play together competitively. Josa thought hard and then decided to have a girls’ football team. When they had their first meeting girls of all ages came to learn and practice. Josa decided that they would let the younger girls come and they would have mixed age teams as well as a first team for matches. After a few months they decided to call themselves ‘The Lionesses’ and start collecting money to buy their own shirts and shorts. They all worked hard and raised enough money to buy material for yellow shirts and brown shorts. A few of the mothers helped them to make the kit. It looked very smart. In the first year they only played games between themselves, but it was great fun. Some of the older girls were not so keen and not so good at football so they decided to go running instead to keep fit. They became ‘The Running Lionesses’ and could be seen outrunning in the cool evenings. Then some of the younger married women chose to meet together and do keep-fit exercises to music with their babies on their backs or on a mat watching and clapping. They called their meetings ‘Keep-Fit with Cubs.’ Josa’s mother met together with some of the women to talk about a campaign to improve the health clinic in the village. They wanted to raise money to buy new equipment for the clinic and to mend the leaking roof. Letters were written to the authorities about the clinic. They worked hard making and selling and soon raised enough to mend the clinic roof.“We can be Lionesses too,” they said.

FAQs

Why does Josa feel sad at first?

The head teacher refuses to allow girls in the school football team, so Josa can’t play in the school team.

How does Josa respond to being excluded?

She decides to form a girls’ football team and organizes girls of different ages to train and play matches.

What community activities grow from the “Lionesses” idea?

Some older girls focus on running and become “The Running Lionesses,” married women hold music keep-fit sessions called “Keep-Fit with Cubs,” and the group also raises money to improve the village health clinic.

Jul 17, 2026

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