Empowering Others After fighting societal norms in India, Rima Kumari ’26 champions education for other women.

Laura Lemon
February 24, 2025

Weaving through rice paddy fields and wading through river crossings, Rima Kumari ’26 was careful to avoid main roads in the 45-minute journey from her hometown of Sildiri, India, to neighboring Hesatu. On the soccer fields there, other girls from impoverished families gathered to be a part of Yuwa, a local organization that used the sport to develop confidence and character in girls. Her father had forbidden Kumari from playing the game as dictated by the societal norms of her home in Jharkhand, a rural state in eastern India.“I have been very rebellious on everything,” says Kumari. “Whenever people have said no, I have always questioned why. And if it doesn’t make sense to me, then I go beyond.”

Though she was only 10 at the time, Kumari understood since she was a young child the trajectory of her life and the lack of influence she had on her autonomy. Viewed as liabilities and burdens in her culture, girls experienced little to no formal education as they instead prepared for three jobs: marriage (often as child brides), motherhood and household chores.

But one day, she crossed paths with two other girls walking with a soccer ball in hand and saw a glimmer of something different. Having just returned from the Donosti Cup, an international grassroots soccer tournament in Spain, these Yuwa players received respect from the village that Kumari had never witnessed before toward women.

As the first two people from the village to fly on an airplane, let alone visit another country, their status changed, no longer expected to marry young or learn chores.

“Determined to pursue my dream, I started secretly going to the soccer ground behind [my parents’] backs,” says Kumari. “I cherished the time spent with the other girls. It felt like where I belonged, and Yuwa was truly eye-opening for me.”

With each personal milestone, Kumari has taken care to remember her origins and the causes that prompted her to push motherhood and household chores.

But one day, she crossed paths with two other girls walking with a soccer ball in hand and saw a glimmer of something different. Having just returned from the Donosti Cup, an international grassroots soccer tournament in Spain, these Yuwa players received respect from the village that Kumari had never witnessed before toward women.

As the first two people from the village to fly on an airplane, let alone visit another country, their status changed, no longer expected to marry young or learn chores.

“Determined to pursue my dream, I started secretly going to the soccer ground behind [my parents’] backs,” says Kumari. “I cherished the time spent with the other girls. It felt like where I belonged, and Yuwa was truly eye-opening for me.”

She persisted even through the fallout when her parents discovered her new hobby. But despite the punishment and bullying from others in the village, she expanded her dreams to include an education.

“It wasn’t just convincing my parents; the full society was against education,” she says.

Yuwa expanded its operations into opening a school in 2015, with a mission of teaching and empowering girls in a state where six in 10 girls are forced to marry before adulthood and the female literacy rate is only 55%. Kumari had never received a formal education until she enrolled there as a sixth-grader.

She paid for her school fees on her own — and her sister’s — by coaching a few of the organization’s soccer teams, leading workshops and going door-to-door recruiting new players. She learned English and how to read and write. In 2019, she was accepted into the Kennedy-Lugar Youth Exchange and Study Program and lived in New Jersey for a year. There she first learned of Washington and Lee University.

With her unique background, she wanted a school that provided a close-knit community and space for her to grow but not get lost. W&L captured all those wants. She enrolled in 2023 as a transfer student from Rowan College at Burlington County, majoring in economics and earth and environmental geoscience with a minor in poverty and human capability studies. She became involved in the Shepherd Program, Pan-Asian Association for Cultural Exchange, the South Asian Student Association and the Frisbee Club.

“I feel like my life was already sketched [out], but I erased it,” she says. “I’m mapping my own life now. I still want to choose and see what I like. The liberal arts was the perfect match.”

With each personal milestone, Kumari has taken care to remember her origins and the causes that prompted her to push against social order. When she first learned to sign her name as a student at Yuwa, she taught her mother and many other women in the village how to do the same. She delivered a TEDx Talk with Yuwa co-founder Franz Gastler in 2019 on the liberating ways soccer equips girls with skills.

She represented India at Fora’s Global Summit in 2022 as the youngest among 30 delegates discussing global perspectives on gender inequality. She served as a delegate for the Women Deliver Conference in Rwanda, one of the largest conferences on gender equality and women’s health in the world and was a White House consultant in a session for Global Youth Advocates. And back in Sildiri, Kumari personally helped 10 to 15 girls in her village enroll in school.

“I feel like I’m living lives for so many other girls who are looking at me,” she says. “What I say is not just my voice, but I feel like the voices of so many other girls back in my village or in India.”

Through a Shepherd internship program, she spent the summer of 2024 teaching English and math to girls at the Atoot school in the Kapilvastu District of Nepal. Girls in Nepal face gender-based violence, child marriage, human trafficking and limited education, and Atoot uses soccer and education to build self-esteem and confidence, much like Yuwa. Kumari taught with staff members and led workshops covering topics from hygiene to friendship and team building. While there, she had the students create a personal book with pages devoted to a self-portrait, illustrations of their homes, a food collage and more.

“Through their personal storybooks, these talented girls have illuminated their worlds with bright smiles, celebrating creativity and the joys of everyday life,” says Kumari. “Working with these girls has been a pleasure, filled with laughter, surprises and boundless creativity.”

The question of what’s beyond continues to engulf her just as it did as a little girl. But she now sees countless possibilities awaiting after graduating, from working as a public policy analyst to pursuing a Ph.D. to writing a book. She relishes the simple fact that she can choose for herself, such as studying abroad at Oxford University during W&L’s 2024-2025 Winter Term.

“I was talking to my mom, and my mom goes, ‘You know, this wasn’t the life that we were supposed to live,’” Kumari says. “I sometimes feel, ‘Am I still dreaming?’

“It’s just a miracle that happened — or maybe it was just meant to be,” she adds. “I’m very happy and glad that I’m here and that I’m able to inspire so many other girls. There are so many girls who are studying right now and seeing the future of being an independent woman.”