Play like a girl: Skillz Street.

Following successful pilots of the curriculum in Cape Town and Port Elizabeth, Skillz Street has officially been added as a supplementary curriculum as part of Grassroot Soccer’s Life Skillz and HIV prevention work in South Africa. With funding partly from the Elton John foundation GRS has trained coaches in Cape Town, Johannesburg and Port Elizabeth in this innovative curriculum that is designed to cater to young girls who in South Africa are more likely to contract HIV than their male counterparts. 

As mentioned in a prior blog Skillz Street is is a girls targeted intervention forming part of Grassroot Soccer’s life skills and HIV prevention programs. The intervention has been developed in response to overwhelming research that shows:

1.      Participation in sport among adolescent females correlates to a range of health benefits, and;

2.      HIV is disproportionately concentrated among women and girls.

Skillz Street combines Fair Play soccer with HIV Counseling and Testing (HCT), assertiveness-, efficacy-, and interpersonal relationship-building activities including a peer led community outreach day. 

In the pilot version of the curriculum run in November we did not implement the HCT element but this was tried out successfully in Cape Town and we will be following suite here in Port Elizabeth.  Testing is voluntary and for many of the girls, this will be their first time testing for HIV. The goal is to allow them to know their status and build good habits. Many young people have their first sexual experience early, therefore being aware of the dangers that come with unprotected sex and multiple sexual partners will hopefully deter them from irresponsible sex. The community outreach component of the program allows girls to be aware of opportunities and services available in their communities. Fairplay soccer places an emphasis on teamwork, respecting opponents and communication between players and a mediator.  

On Wednesday April 13^th a Training of Coches (ToC) for Skillz Street began. We decided to train all our female coaches to start things off, with the view of training more coaches in future. The training lasted 3 days and one of our Trainers from Cape Town, “Hooter” led the group in discussion and activities from the Skillz Street curriculum. It was a fantastic time and on the final day coaches were confident enough to deliver parts of the curriculum to each other in preparation of actually doing the program with kids in their communities. 

I was happy to be part of the planning and implementation of the training and having already planned and coordinated the last Skillz Street I am sure that we can use lessons from the pilot and this training to ensure that the program fulfills its goal of engaging young girls in a meaningful way. Skillz Street targets girls aged between 12 and 18.

Our coaches were very responsive and their position as role models in their communities is undoubted. The next 3 weeks will involve some heavy planning to ensure that Skillz Street reaches girls in the three communities we serve. I am energized by the challenge and hopeful that our program will prove to be a catalyst to positive change. 

Coaches participating in a Skillz Street discussion.

During the training we watched some high impact videos illustrating the power and potential of young girls when given opportunities. Our organization plays a part in the lives of a generation of girls that we hope will live a happy healthy life HIV free.

First video - The Girl Effect (see girleffect.org) :

Second video 1 goal, 2 girls: 

Approximately 600 girls will go through the Skillz Street program in Port Elizabeth this calendar year. I was inspired by the energy and verve of our coaches during the training and I am confident that they will take this to the field with the young girls we will be working with!