Breaking My Barriers

Rupa grew up in Mumbai, where, she says, “when a woman is pregnant everyone prays it will be a boy.” She found football at 16, at OSCAR Foundation’s Kick Like a Girl sessions, arriving barefoot and unable to kick a ball. What kept her coming back was the encouragement: “There was always someone there to say, no, you CAN do it.”

Sport became her life. Today she is a semi-professional long-distance runner who has paid her own race fees, “knowing I had no choice but to win a medal”, and a member of the Home Guard who hopes one day to join the police. Her advice to anyone who is told they can’t is simple: “Don’t listen to those people telling you that you can’t.”