Sisters' Stories: How boxing has helped 16-year-old Rushna

For our ‘Sisters’ Stories’ series, we love sharing some of the very different stories, backgrounds and successes of the women and girls we support.

Rushna is one of our younger beneficiaries, aged just 16. She originally comes from the Sinjar area, but has lived in the Rwanga camp for seven years after arriving with her family following the ISIS attacks of 2014. 

Living in cramped camp accommodation and going without many of the usual opportunities that childhood brings, Rushna’s journey has certainly not been easy. But she has not let that get in the way of her ambitions to learn and grow.

She has thrown herself into many of the projects we provide, including English language lessons and our Peace Sisters initiative – in which she has developed new skills in mediation and conflict resolution, as well as critical thinking and communications.

Rushna has also found our regular girls’ boxing classes to be hugely beneficial – for both her mental and physical wellbeing. “I really enjoy boxing because it makes me feel strong,” she says. “I hope one day to be a boxing trainer myself, so I can teach other women and girls to defend themselves. It’s not all about physical strength, but it also gives you a strong sense of self-confidence and self-determination to face the difficulties in our lives. I want to share that with other young girls.”

Our boxing classes are the result of our hugely popular Boxing Sisters project, which recognised that boxing is a great form of stress relief. We also noticed that it helped participants with anger management, enabling trauma to move through the body before being released from the muscles.

Rushna has also found socialising at our women and girls’ centre very helpful. “It gives me opportunities to learn new skills and meet new friends, so we can spend time together instead of being stuck in our accommodation.”

It’s always incredibly rewarding to hear about the positive impacts of our projects, so please do support us so we can keep making a difference to many more young women and girls’ lives…