Hijabi Ballers aims to showcase Muslim females in sports

A huge billboard at Yonge-Dundas Square is highlighting a not-for-profit aimed at providing access to sports for Muslim women.

The billboard features three young women from the organization, Hijabi Ballers, wearing hijabs.

The Hijabi Ballers are just some of the athletes featured in the advertising for a collaborations between the Toronto Raptors and Hudson’s Bay, who created a clothing line where all the proceeds go towards creating opportunities for racialized youth and creating opportunities for change.

The grassroots organization, Hijabi Ballers, was created in 2017 by Amreen Kadwa with simply a Facebook post.

Kadwa told CityNews she started the group because of a lack of excitement and celebration around Muslim female athletes.

“When I spoke with a lot of athletes who were Muslim and female, especially visibly Muslim athletes, they felt excluded from either their cultural or religious communities or from their sport communities,” said Kadwa.

“And I felt that there was really a gap of a network or resource that connected Muslim female athletes to each other and to the bigger sports community, to the bigger cultural and religious community where they could feel appreciated and celebrated.”

“It [started to] gain a lot of momentum [and] we had a lot more partnerships,” said Kadwa. “We started a partnership with Nike which is one of our biggest partners right now.”

“We had three of our amazing athletes Rishada, Humaira and Yasmin featured in the campaign,” shared Kadwa.

“It’s amazing. We’ve always grown up with this idea that we don’t belong there and that space is for someone else. So to see the girls in the campaign, who look like you, who maybe grew up with you, who played sports like you, it just makes everything feel so real and it makes you feel like you can achieve all these things that like you never thought were possible.”

She added being a part of a campaign that is not exclusively Muslim-focused or female-focused was very eye-opening.

“It was just really [an] eye-opening opportunity for us to know that there’s room for us out there and there’s vision for us in sports on billboards, like you belong there. And the girls in my campaign were super excited to be part of it,” said Kadwa.

“The whole experience was very community-focused and there were a lot of other community activists and leaders in the campaign so it was a really awesome opportunity for them to connect as well.”

“It just made us feel like we were part of something bigger. And that the work we’re doing is impacting more than just Muslim female athletes.”

The organization run programs, host tournaments, provides mentorship and tries to figure out the gaps that exist when it comes to Muslim females in sports.

During the pandemic, the group some programming online, so their reach is now international. It also has a number of resources online including a toolkit to help coaches, sports clubs and athletes include Muslim females in those spaces.

More information on Hijabi Ballers can be found here, including a schedule of the organization’s activities.

____

With files from Meredith Bond of CityNews