Tonga Football Association has been chosen alongside five other countries to pilot a new FIFA women’s football development programme.
The project will focus on growing participation, which is a key focus for TFA in it’s current development strategy.
FIFA Chief Women’s Football Officer Sarai Bareman said: “Tonga has a strong foundation favouring women’s football development and therefore has been identified as a high potential FIFA member in supporting this goal.
“Before rolling out our participation strategy globally, it is important that we carry out a successful pilot phase,” Bareman continued.
“FIFA’s new approach to women’s football development is to create tailor made projects and this project will support the specific needs of Tonga over a period of 18 months.”
FIFA will appoint a technical expert who will work with Tonga Football especially the Head of Women’s Football on a regular basis.
She will help Tonga Football design a long-term programme in order to grow the participation of girls into football and based on that, FIFA support will be awarded (equipment and direct financial investment).
Lui ‘Aho, Tonga Football’s General Secretary said: “We are very grateful for this opportunity, and we already identified that ‘Eua will be the ideal place to kick start this project.”
“I would like to extend our sincere, gratitude and appreciation to FIFA especially the Women’s Football department for their continued support. I can assure you that our women’s football division and technical department will co-operate with the FIFA expert to ensure this pilot project is successful.”
FIFA’s Live your Goals project was executed in Tonga in 2016 and over 800 young girls participated and more than 40 female coaches have benefited from FIFA Women’s Coaching courses. Tonga also received a FIFA Women’s Administration workshop for all women’s team administrator two years ago.