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!   

It all started in Bulawayo

Former Zimbabwean soccer star and coach, Methembe Ndlovu shares his story of using the power and popularity of soccer to fight HIV / AIDS in Zimbabwe. The organization was founded in Zimbabwe by himself,  and Tommy Clark with the support of other team-mates at Highlanders F.C. in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe. They leveraged their influence as popular footballer to engage youths in the community in a life skills and HIV prevention program that has been evolving since its introduction in 2003!

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.

Port Elizabeth updates

Our office is abuzz as always, obstacles or not. Unfortunately we have had no electricity for the last week since someone decided that it was a good idea to steal the copper wires connecting us to the electrical grid! In typical GRS fashion we have buckled down and the show goes on.

Schools are currently out at the moment, and so most of our coaches will not be doing any interventions this week – the holiday is only a week long. Our training team is taking the time to train more of our coaches in the Generation Skillz curriculum which is targeted at youths aged 15 – 19. The topics covered here are more mature than those covered in the regular Skillz Curriculum which is for 12 to 15 year olds. Not all of our 47 coaches had been trained in the curriculum, so now is the ideal time to catch up so we can have enough capacity to meet our target for graduates at the end of the year.

Next week we will be returning to Skillz Street, an intervention we piloted at the end of last year. This time around we will have a 3 day training for coaches that will be delivering the curriculum in our site. Skillz Street is a post Skillz curriculum intervention for girls – main components of this intervention include empowerment of young girls through sport, while promoting HIV prevention and community engagement. I will be assisting with the training as far as day to day logistics go, as a team from our Cape Town Headquarters will be guiding our trainers.

Having spent almost 8 months in Port Elizabeth, I am always floored by the dedication of some of the people I work with – the quest to reduce HIV infections and promote real behavior change will need this level of commitment. I am inspired and I hope to finish my last 2 months on the highest possible note.

Measuring the impact of Sports on Youth Develoment

Article courtesy of GRSweb:

On March 1st, GRS Co-Founder and Africa Executive Director Kirk Friedrich participated in a panel hosted by USAID in Washington, D.C. on “Measuring the Impact of Sports on Youth Development”. Sponsored by the Office of Development Partners (ODP), over 125 guests and staff heard from NGO leadership who work with sports as a platform for youth development and spoke on the evaluation techniques for measuring the impact of these programs.



The following blogpost at USAID provides more details about the event,

GRS philosophy and values

Last Friday we had our weekly development session, where the staff (interns and site coordinators) meet with our peer educators (we call them Grassroot Soccer coaches) to discuss how programs are going and to help them effectively fulfill their important role in engaging the youths we are working towards reaching in the community. This particular week we discussed the very essence of our organisation. Siya one of the site coordinators led the charge here, with an activity I was happy help to plan and implement.

After playing a game derived from our curriculum we had a group discussion led by Siya. The discussion was geared towards seeking to find out how our coaches defined their personal values and how these values fit into the culture and philosophy of Grassroot Soccer. Everyone agreed that their roles as peer educators are the result of the HIV/AIDS crisis currently affecting the country.

Although most of the discussion was in Xhosa (the predominant language used in the communities we work in) I could tell that the activity struck a nerve with the coaches. It was an inspirational moment as I once again realized how crucial the coaches our to the organization. Teaching behavior change and healthy habits is best done by people who are actively living that lifestyle. I won't claim that the coaches are perfect role models but Friday I heard stories of coaches talking about how their role as peer eduators had changed them and improved their own situation. Being a role model pushes you to look at your own value system, the choice to change or stay the same is left to the individual. By being given an opportunity to inspire others they have inspired each other.

I was happy to witness this moment, and I am confident that we have a strong team doing great work in the field.

Below is an outline of the basic principles of our organisation that I extracted from our website for the activity:

Our values and philosophy, where do you stand?

Mission: Grassroot Soccer uses the power of soccer to educate, inspire, and mobilize communities to stop the spread of HIV.

Philosphy – Our curriculum is based on the Social Learning Theory. The program combines three powerful principles of education:

- Kids learn best from people they respect. Role models have a unique power to influence young minds. Young people listen to and emulate their heroes. Grassroot Soccer uses professional players and other role models as HIV educators and spokespeople. - Learning is not a spectator sport. Adolescents retain knowledge best when they are active participants in the learning process, teaching others what they themselves have learned. Grassroot Soccer graduates are trained to become peer educators and advocates in their communities. - It takes a village. Role models can change what young people think about, but lifelong learning requires lifelong community support. Grassroot Soccer fosters community involvement through youth outreach, long-term partnerships and special events like graduation ceremonies for graduates

Vision: A world mobilized through soccer to prevent new HIV infections.

Strategy (Reality): To achieve our mission, we continuously improve our innovative HIV prevention and life-skills curriculum, share our program and concept effectively, and utilize the popularity of soccer to increase our impact.

Tactics – Way forward

1. To continually improve our innovative, culturally sensitive and fun ‘Skillz’ curriculum.
2. To effectively share our curriculum and concept with local implementing partners, allowing us to achieve scale in a sustainable way while making use of local capacity and infrastructure.
3. To empower local community role models (professional soccer players, youth sport coaches, teachers, peer educators, etc.) with the tools to educate the youth in their communities.