Layan Abu Salah and Dalia Al-Atoum became football coaches. Learning the game itself was not the hardest part.
Dalia says: “In my community, at first, people did not accept the idea of a woman being a leader, because they believed that women are guided more by emotion than by reason.”
“In my community, at first, people did not accept the idea of a woman being a leader, because they believed that women are guided more by emotion than by reason.”
She says this calmly, as though describing a widely held belief in her community rather than making a complaint.
Johud implemented the WorldCoaches Project in partnership with the Royal Netherlands Football Association and with support from the Kingdom of the Netherlands. The project follows a deliberate approach: rather than offering temporary activities for children, it trains people from within their own communities to become local coaches whom children know and who remain present even after the project ends. The training focuses on personal development, health and social cohesion. Here, football is a tool, not the end goal.
The project completely changed Layan’s career path. “I moved from working in architecture to becoming a football coach,” she says. Behind that sentence lies a childhood spent playing football in the street and dreaming of becoming a footballer, while growing up with the prevailing belief that this was not a path girls were expected to pursue.
Reflecting on how she started, Layan says: “I had no previous experience.” Through the training courses, she and Dalia gained practical knowledge of coaching and of using football to develop life skills. Dalia now runs a sports club in Jordan.
