Chipata Girls FC
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Our story

It started on a dusty field in 2019.

Chipata Girls FC is a community football club in Chipata, Eastern Province, Zambia. We use football to keep girls in school and out of early marriage. Six years on, more than 100 girls train with us every week.

2019

Founders Mr. C. Dube and Mr. M. J. Phiri met a group of girls playing barefoot at the Chipata College Education grounds. No kits. No equipment. No league. Just determination.

Instead of walking away, they stepped in — as coaches, mentors, guardians, and sometimes parents. Chipata Girls FC was born: a football club, yes, but more importantly a lifeline.

Six years later, over 100 girls train with us every week. Some came from early teenage marriages. Some had left school. All of them now have a team that believes in them, and a path they get to choose.

A large group of girls gathers with bags and kit on a bare, dusty pitch at the edge of the trees, ready for a session.

A session on the dusty pitch.

Our mission

We teach the game. We change the life.

  • Keep girls off the streets and away from early marriage.
  • Give a girl the skills to run her own life — on the pitch, in the classroom, and after both.
  • Send her back to school, and help her finish.
  • Build confident, compassionate leaders for Eastern Province and beyond.

What we do

Football is the doorway. Everything behind it is the real work.

  • Competitive football

    Weekly training and league play — unbeaten in the 2024/25 Eastern Women Provincial League, and back in the Zambia Super League.

  • Education support

    School fees, materials, and mentoring, so a teenage mother or a girl who had to leave school can come back to the classroom and finish.

  • Life skills & mentoring

    Leadership, financial literacy, health, faith-based guidance, and gender-based-violence sensitisation workshops.

  • Community outreach

    Our girls visit schools, mentor younger players, and lead community clean-ups and awareness drives.

A Chipata Girls FC goalkeeper rises to claim the ball above a crowd of players, in front of a stand of watching supporters.
Coaches and staff stand in a classroom holding certificates, with footballs and training bibs on the table in front of them.
Chipangula Dube stands talking with visiting partners and players beside the ground at the end of the day.

The founder

Chipangula Dube, founder and club director of Chipata Girls FC, arms folded, in a Zambia national team shirt.
Chipangula Dube · Club Director & Founder

He met the girls playing barefoot, and he never left.

Chipangula Dube

Club Director & Founder

Chipangula Dube started Chipata Girls FC in 2019 to keep girls in his community out of early marriage and to take the girl child back to school. Six years on he is still the club’s director — and, most weeks, also its coach, its mentor, and one of the adults who goes looking when a player stops turning up.

He has done it on very little. Equipment, transport, school fees: every kwacha stretched. What he has to show for it is a squad that keeps winning, players who have gone on to bigger clubs in the premier league, and girls he took back to school who are now in full employment through football.

2019The year he met the girls playing barefoot — and stayed.

100+Girls training with the club every week, six years on.

UnbeatenThe 2024/25 Eastern Women Provincial League. Now back in the Zambia Super League.

Chipangula Dube accepts a ZedPro Division One Team of the Season trophy, both men holding it between them beside a Zambian flag.

Accepting the ZedPro Division One Team of the Season trophy.

A letter from our director

Dear friends and supporters,

I started Chipata Girls FC to curb early marriage in our community and to take the girl child back to school. I have always seen myself as a tool of change — and football has been the easiest way to reach her.

Our biggest challenge has been finances. Equipment, transport, school fees — every kwacha stretched. The girls, though, have given me courage that one day things will be better. Many of those I have groomed now play for bigger clubs in the premier league. Others I took back to school are in full employment through football.

One story I will always carry: my goalkeeper, now with the Zambia Army. She could hardly eat some days, her family struggled with rent — but she never missed a training. Today she has built her parents a house. I am proud of her.

Do not take these girls as kitchen helpers. Take them as pioneers of change. Give them serious programmes, and stand with us.

Chipangula DubeClub Director & Founder

Where we’re going

Over the next five years we want every girl in Eastern Province — and beyond — to know she has a choice. This is what we’re building toward.

  1. Serve 300+ girls a year across Eastern Province.
  2. Build a permanent training facility with pitches, classrooms, and community space.
  3. Launch a youth academy for girls from age 8.
  4. Put every player through a finished school career.
  5. Compete at Zambia’s top level and qualify for international tournaments.
  6. Run exchange programmes with clubs outside Zambia.

Join us in making that vision real.

When you give, you’re not funding a game. Four funds, $20,300, every line costed — school fees, the bus, the essentials, and what comes after school.

See what we’re raising

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