Intoducing: Skillz Street

As mentioned in the Girls Count article earlier, there is an increasing focus on girls in social profit ventures, and Grassroot Soccer is no different. In a society where females have been marginalized and often abused, the need to empower and support young women is imperative.

In our case, this has been manifested in the Skillz Street curriculum which is a new addition to the group of Grassroot Soccer curricula.Skillz Street will include all the lessons from the Generation Skillz curriculum which targets South Africans 15-19 years of age specifically addressing the social norms that fuel this epidemic. In the case of girls aged below 15, the Skillz Core curriculum will be taught. Engaging and empowering young South African women is seen as central to the success of,campaigns to reduce HIV infections in the country.

Unfortunately in many African nations including South Africa, girls have been seen as second-class citizens and not given opportunities to reach their full potential. Sports programs directly challenge such misperceptions about women’s capabilities. Street Skillz aims to empower, inspire and educate young girls, while they enjoy recreational activity through the soccer, participate in community outreach work and learn from the unique Skillz curricula administered by Grassroot Soccer coaches. The idea is to use non-competitive sport to build an atmosphere of collaboration among the girls through fairplay soccer while they learn valuable life lessons.

In a 2008 report, the International Working Group for Sport for Development and Peace stated: “Research on sport, gender and development indicates that sport can benefit girls and women by: enhancing health and well-being; fostering self-esteem and empowerment; facilitating social inclusion and integration; challenging gender norms; and providing opportunities for leadership and achievement.” Access to safe, public space for young women to play soccer is limited, further solidifying gender norms around participation in sport in South Africa and most parts of the African continent. To illustrate this point one can look at the South African Football Association—the 6th largest football association on the planet— which has fewer than 1% registered female players.

An additional aspect of Skillz Street will be integrated testing, with the girls getting the chance to know their status having gone through either the Skillz curriculum, or Generation Skillz.

In its 2009-2011 Outcome Framework, UNAIDS identified “stopping violence against women and girls” and “empowering young people to protect themselves from HIV” as two of its eight key priority areas. To achieve these goals the GRS team that devised Skillz Street feels that "young women in South Africa need increased knowledge about the dangers of multiple concurrent partnerships and older partners, self-efficacy to avoid cross-generational and transactional sex, perception of opportunity, skills to negotiate safer sexual relationships, and support to stay strong when faced with challenges." Skillz Street will hopefully play a role in this educational push, especially among young women of South Africa.

Over the next few weeks our team will be looking to launch Skillz Street in Port Elizabeth. The challenge is getting it done during the holiday period when most kids will be leaving home to travel for the holidays.Most of our regular interventions are tied with the school year, whether it be doing programs during or after school, with teacher supervision. Our first attempt at delivering the Skillz street curriculum will most likely overlap with the school holidays, it will be a challenge but there should be a way to make it work. Once January things will be more clear cut and we can look forward to working with girls in different townships around PE.