Thank you for joining us for the latest edition of our regular NGO of the Month feature. We’re committed to sharing with you some of the very best non-profit organizations in the world to inspire you and your NGO onto greater heights.
Last month we featured the brilliant One Acre Fund whose innovative work supplies smallholder farmers with the tools and financing they need to grow their way out of hunger and poverty. Read the August Edition of NGO of the Month here.
For September we’re thrilled to be joined by Chris Barba from Grassroot Soccer who uses the fanatical passion of football fans around the world to deliver information about HIV prevention.
What inspired the establishment of Grassroot Soccer?
Grassroot Soccer (GRS), Inc. became a registered 501(c)3 charitable organization in 2002. Its founder, Tommy Clark, MD, conceived of the idea after playing soccer professionally in Zimbabwe where he witnessed first hand both the devastation of HIV and the fanatical popularity of soccer. Tommy and his co-founders developed and piloted an interactive, soccer-themed HIV prevention curriculum that was first implemented in Zimbabwe in 2002-2003. The idea was to use soccer players, who were heroes in their communities to break through the deafening silence that surrounded HIV. Reinforced by Stanford University sociologist Albert Benduro’s social learning theory, which proposes kids learn best from role models they admire, the programme grew to train young adults from the local community to deliver sports-based interventions that show kids aged 12 to 19 how to avoid contracting HIV. GRS now operates flagship sites in Zimbabwe, South Africa and Zambia and has worked through partnerships in 28 countries worldwide. Since 2002, more than 680,000 youth have graduated from programs run by GRS and its partners worldwide.
What is special about Grassroot Soccer?
Innovation is core to our work and is institutionalized through a continuous process of idea development, testing, evaluation, and learning. GRS promotes idea generation and innovation from all staff and volunteers, particularly at the community-level as many of our highest-impact programmes emerged out of insights from volunteers and staff working with youth and communities. GRS is recognized as one of the first organizations to use a soccer-based (sports-based) approach to HIV prevention. The innovative use of soccer, and GRS’s leading role in
the field, has been well documented in a systematic review of the effectiveness of sports-based HIV prevention (SBHP) that was published in AIDS & Behaviour in 2013.
An example of an innovative way that GRS has used soccer as a tool to fight HIV/AIDS is the SKILLZ branded curricula, which uses soccer-themed activities and constantly evolves in response to emerging evidence of key drivers of HIV/AIDS within specific populations. GRS’s SKILLZ Magazines are supplementary educational materials that weave together soccer and health messages in a format that resonates with youth and have been delivered to more than 3 million South Africans through innovative partnerships with schools and local media companies.
How does Grassroot Soccer change lives?
GRS has worked with youth in southern Africa for the past 11 years and has become convinced of the potential of (1) a positive soccer culture and (2) real-life role models to change attitudes, increase self-efficacy, and stimulate action. The experience of a “team” and engagement with “people just like me” moves and motivates, and shows young people that life can be different: it can be better and I can make this happen. A key aspect of GRS’s methodology is the pairing of young participants with dynamic Coaches to create an environment of safe, discovery based learning for the purpose of addressing issues that matter to young people, including violence against girls. Independent research has proven that GRS’s interventions build participants’ knowledge and understanding of high-risk behaviors, changing attitudes, as well as adopting health-seeking behaviors, including increased uptake of health and psychosocial support services (Kaufman Z., AIDS & Behavior 2012).
Why is Grassroot Soccer important to the community you work in?
GRS’s learning model takes a “village to raise a child” approach. GRS fosters community involvement through youth outreach events and local partnerships. Projects are locally rooted and supported through active involvement and project ownership from local organizations and stakeholders, such as the Thuthuzela Care Center, a rape care management facility. GRS also invests deeply in the communities it works in, focusing on the transfer of technical competence, institutional strengthening, and capacity building of partner organizations and individuals.
What is your NGO’s vision for the world?
A world mobilized through soccer to create an AIDS free generation.
Visit Grassroot Soccer’s Website
