A woman on a mission - the story of a glamorous young African woman’s intense passion for football Some people refer to her as a “brand’’, some as an international socialite’’ and others as “the iron lady,” Isha Johansen, is a household name in Sierra Leone, and the President of Sierra Leone’s Football Association and first ever female president of the Federation, and currently the only female FA President in the world. She has her own premier football club, making her one of two women in the world to own a national football club. FC Johansen was a project that started at the end of the country’s civil war in 2002 and was aimed at keeping young boys in school through football. Isha has literally won many hearts in Sierra Leone and physically worn many more hats. Isha was the first Sierra Leone female publisher with an entertainment magazine called Rapture in 1993. She is the Founder of the Pink Charity Fund (breast cancer) and organizer of the Pink Ball which she organised as an awareness raising event. She is also the founder of Sierra Leone’s Women of Excellence Awards, an event which highlights the contributions of Sierra Leonean women to their country. She served as the West Africa correspondent and one of the directors for the sophisticated OVATION magazine, Africa’s equivalent to Hello magazine and publisher of the Kabo magazine; Sierra Leones first and only inflight magazine got the attention of the Ministry of Tourism, which they eventually used to reposition the country in the early years after the war. These local and international engagements led her to interact with other global icons like boxing legend Muhammed Ali, Supermodel Iman, Bill Gates, Heads of States, European royalties, and many more. “I have never played the gender card in all my pursuits, but I do realize that I have inspired a lot of women and made them proud” said Isha recently at the Women in Public Life Lecture Series organised by the 50/50 GROUP at the Radisson Blue Hotel in Freetown. What’s your advice to other women who dare to find themselves in unchartered territories? Isha’s response: “Integrity is all a woman has, you cannot do it without integrity, sincerity, and commitment”. Isha refers to her Norwegian husband as “the rock behind me”. In narrating her journey, Isha said in the beginning she was made to sometimes question herself as to whether she was in the right field “it sure did feel lonely being a woman in a male dominated arena trying to steer the leadership in the direction of a new era for football in Sierra Leone whilst most of the crew were bent on navigating towards another direction, but you know what? If you can Dream it, you can do it and yes, dreams do come true”. Isha says she got her inspiration from her father who was a co-founder of a renowned football stakeholder with the legendary EAST END Lions. “Being an only girl amongst my two brothers and their many friends, I played table tennis, handball, cycling and of course football. . . I was always relegated to the goal post and never played with the girly things like dolls”. Amongst Isha’s most notable legacy to Sierra Leone and African football is the organising and hosting of two international youth football tournament in Freetown called the Africa International Youth Football Tournament (AIYT) that brought together clubs from Brazil, Norway, Senegal, Nigeria, Liberia, Guinea, South Africa and Ghana. This initiative was well received by the West African Football Union, (WAFU) who co-opted her concept into their annual football calendar. Isha, starting from her neighbourhood, has single handedly nurtured mainly orphaned and underprivileged boys to become not only local and international youth icons but to spread the goodwill of Sierra Leone around the world. Some of these boys have been called up for trials in some of the world’s most famous and powerful football teams such as Chelsea, Manchester city, and Liverpool. FC Johansen has travelled the world over, playing tournaments and friendlies with other young talented footballers in Sweden, Norway, America, Spain, Nigeria, Ghana and Switzerland, rubbing shoulders with football icons like Zidane and David Beckham. At the end of this interview, Isha disclosed that overcoming all the hurdles and honouring an invitation from the President of Confederation of African Football (CAF) to its headquarters in Egypt, and being invited to the ‘Home of FIFA’ in Zurich made me realise that I have truly come a long way, and that I have arrived. “I am now not just a national champion, but an international player, and I intend to take Mama Salone all the way to the top” CREDIT: unwomenwestandcentralafrica/news1/a-woman-on-a-mission-the-story-of-a-glamorous-young-african-womans-intense-passion-for-football
Posted on: Thu, 17 Jul 2014 12:36:08 +0000
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