Bacary Sagna: GRS Ambassador!

 Bacary Sagna (left) with one of the founders of GRS, Methembe Ndlovhu

Bacary Sagna, right-back for the Arsenal football club and the French National Team, recently joined Grassroot Soccer as an ambassador. Bacary had this to say: “In Africa soccer is like a religion. I see that Grassroot Soccer is using the power of the game to improve the lives of many young people across Africa. I am African and I play the beautiful game. So I am very excited to be part of the Grassroot Soccer team”.  

Grassroot Soccer, is an international non-profit, uses the power of the game to educate, inspire and empower young people to live healthy and productive lives.

For the full story click here. Story courtesy of GRSweb.

To make a donation to Grassroot Soccer, click here.

2011 - Expansion plans

Happy to be back in Port Elizabeth again after going back to Zimbabwe for 3 weeks. Our office is getting straight back into the swing of things, as we prepare to hire 20 new peer educators to work in Motherwell, New Brighton and Zwide.

There is a commitment in Grassroot Soccer to expand our work throughout the shools, and there is no reater signal of these intentions than the hiring of new coaches. Interviews begin tomorrow and the Training of Coaches will be next week.

Skillz to take on the world!

Grassroot Soccer is developing several curricula, focusing on different age groups starting at the age of 12. The curricula, and notes associated with them are available for public viewing on Google sites. To learn more about them, visit Google sites page here. Some parts of the page are blank because the site is a work in progress.Input on these programs, curricula and plans is welcome.

A few steps closer to a million changemakers...

The calendar GRS uses to do its books of accounts is aligned with the American fiscal year due to the major sponsorship we receive from the states. What does this mean? The Financial year of 2010 is over as of Sptember 30th. GRS SA set a target of 26,000 graduates to go through the Skillz curriculum(as seen above) for the year. We managed 25,400, an excellent achievement considering major disruptions from the civil servant strikes of August and early Septmber. Kilo!

Port Elizbeth managed to graduate 5,433, a few hundred off the target of 6,000 (again, the strike hurt our numbers).

GRS aims to graduate a million changemakers by 2014 around Africa, at this rate, we are well on course!