Well I’ve really sucked at blogging lately, sorry mom and dad.
It’s way too much to catch up on everything that’s been going on, but here’s a
little snapshot of my new life.
Cape Town is just like the US except sometimes the doorknobs don’t work and the roofs leak.... Maybe that gives you a little snapshot of what it's like here.
My birthday (almost a whole month ago) was so much fun and I
got to spend it with some great people. 12 of us rented a bus and went on a
wine tour through Stellenbosch, which is an area about an hour outside Cape Town that has a ton of wineries. We went to 5 wineries, spent the night at a hostel and then celebrated
another GRS intern, Scott, and his bday on Sunday. I would call it a very successful and shenanigan-filled weekend.
The gang
The damage
Sadly, one of the former interns, Jeff Devereux, left us a
few weeks ago so we obviously had to have a going away party/week. We hosted it
at Gordon House and Nath cooked us a delicious meal from scratch. Our kitchen isn't quite up to par (the burners choose to work or not work on their own accord) and the food was very labor intensive, so we didn’t end up
eating until around 10:00, but it was well worth the wait and we found plenty of
ways to occupy ourselves.
The delicious feast
Using the winking self-timer on my camera
Surprising Dev with silly string and kazoos
The weather has kinda started to get nicer here, minus the random
hailstorms, so we finally made it out to Camps Bay. This is a beach about 20 minutes from our house and is one of the more ritzy areas of Cape
Town (Beckham has a house here). Being on the beach and then looking around at
the mountains was one of those, “I actually live here?” moments. It's so beautiful now, I can't imagine what summer is going to be like. We followed the beach day by a girls’ night out
watching the sunset with Italian food and wine. Can’t complain.
This past weekend we went to a Whale Watching festival in
Hermanus, a city about an hour and a half outside of Cape Town. This trip was a
true adventure. We had two cars full of people heading out there, when the
first car that left a little before us calls and says they're pulled over on the
highway with a flat tire. We found them in the pouring rain and it ended up taking us about 45 min to get
the tire changed. Two cop cars pulled over next to us but never got out of the
car to help… not sure what was going on with that, maybe they were bored?
Anyway, we finally got the tire changed, the cops left, and then we realized that
the battery was dead. We obviously didn’t have jumper cables, so we had to try and push-start the car. Again, it’s still pouring rain. This took about another
30 minutes of pushing the car forward and back, but luckily it finally started. If only we had Triple A...
Real-life Little Miss Sunshine
We finally made it to Hermanus and it was worth the trek. Apparently
this is when the whales migrate from Antartica and come to South Africa to mate. It was pretty incredible how many whales we saw just
standing from the shore. They were so close and were everywhere you looked.
Random people jumping in our pic
Those are some of the big things that have happened,
but life in general has been good. There has been a lot of family dinners/parties and even some baking going on. I’m
proud to say I brought Slutty Brownies to Africa. Work has been really busy but still great. I’m definitely
learning a ton and love getting involved in new projects with different groups of people... And as you can see in the pics below, the office environment is pretty cool.
I think I’m finally
starting to realize that I live here and don’t have to be doing something at
all moments. These past couple weeks have been
nice though just exploring the city or laying in the park in the sun.
Juggling in the office
Ratatat! Everyone dresses up or gets something to make noise with and parades around the office when we have something big to celebrate. This one was to celebrate one of our papers getting into a big conference in SA. Go GRS!
Alright, I think I’ve been putting this off long enough.
Finally, it’s here… my Grassroot Soccer post!!! Please read, ask questions,
click on links and get excited! I know it’s long and information-heavy, but
it’s really cool stuff so try and read it if possible. I’ll include links too
incase I suck at explaining things. You’ll finally be able to understand what
I’m doing, who I’m working with and why I’m so excited about it all the time.
So Grassroot Soccer (GRS) is a non-profit organization started
by four professional soccer players that uses the power of soccer to educate
kids about HIV/AIDS. Soccer is a universal language across the world and is
something that gets people of all ages excited and interested. Everywhere you
go, no matter how rich or poor, you can always find people playing soccer… even
if the ball is made of bundled up grocery bags and fishing line (which was the
case in Kenya). In the words of the great Michelle Obama, “soccer is the hook.”
GRS facilitates the learning of life skills and HIV
knowledge through interactive soccer-based activities. Topics covered in
interventions (or “practices”) vary based on the age group and the curriculum
being implemented. Our main programs are SKILLZ Core, Generation SKILLZ and
SKILLZ Street. SKILLZ Core is our
original curriculum that targets kids ages 12-14 and mainly focuses on HIV
knowledge and reducing stigmas surrounding the disease. These kids are pretty
young still so the program is trying to catch them before they develop risky behavior.
Generation SKILLZ is for kids ages
15-19 and addresses the main contributors of the spread of HIV: multiple
concurrent partners, intergenerational sex and gender based violence. In a really cool (for lack of a better
word) study conducted in partnership with GRS, we found that 29.1% of
grade-nine boys reported having perpetrated rape, while 37.6% reported having
committed intimate partner violence. That means almost 30% of 16yr old boys
have raped someone. It’s so hard to wrap your head around. Gender norms and GBV
are such huge issues that we’re trying to address. This brings me to SKILLZ Street, our all-girls program.
SKILLZ Street addresses girls aged 12-16 and focuses on empowering girls with
HIV and sexual and reproductive health knowledge. SKILLZ Street lets girls know
that their opinion is just as important as a man’s and they have the power to
say no. This program is so incredible and important that in 2012 it was named
by Women Deliver 50 “one of the most innovative ideas and solutions that is being
delivered for girls and women around the globe.” All these programs are
facilitated by local youth role models who are trained as GRS coaches. Using
people from the community makes the program sustainable and relatable.
Example of a practice activity: In an activity called Risk Field, participants dribble a soccer ball in between cones representing HIV-related risks - multiple partners, drug/alcohol abuse, etc. If one player hits a cone, he and his teammates must complete 3 pushups, showing how the consequences of one person's risk can not only affect him, but also his friends, family and community.
We have other programs as well that target different age
groups or that have specific outcomes, but I think you all get the idea of what
we do and how needed these programs are. Also, GRS is pretty awesome at doing
what we do. Let me brag a little, here are some of our awards:
·Charity Navigator Four-Star Rating (highest
rating) (2011 and 2012)
·Charity Navigator Top Ten List of Charities
Expanding in a Hurry (2011 and 2012)
·CommPro.biz list of “Ten Leading Socially
Engaged Nonprofits“, 2012
·GRS South Africa: Finalist, Sport for Health
Category, Beyond Sport Awards, 2011
·Winner, Nike/Ashoka Sports for a Better World
Collaborative Competition, 2008 (GRS was named one of the three most
innovative, effective, and sustainable organizations in the Sports for
Development Field, out of 382 organizations entered from 69 countries)
Pretty impressive, right? We also are funded by some amazing
organizations including The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Nike, Elton John
Aids Foundation, USAID, Barclays, FIFA, M.A.C. AIDS and UNICEF… just to name a
few.
Another thing I think is really unique and awesome about GRS
is that we have a monitoring and evaluation team and a research and development
team who are continually making sure our programs are working. They administer
pre and post-tests at every intervention to make sure that the kids are
learning and to see if there are any areas we should improve on. This level of
data collection is almost unheard of for a non-profit to do and has enabled us
to present our findings at conferences around the world.
So as I’ve mentioned before, I’m the Business Development
intern and get to have my hands in a lot of different areas. I get to help find
cool organizations to give us some $$$ like the ones above, as well as write
concept notes and grant proposals about our curriculum. I’m even helping to
create new marketing materials and plan events. It’s a lot, but I love it and
the work keeps me motivated. As one of the coaches in Khayelitsha told me,
“we’re in the business of saving lives.” Damn.
Sorry for rambling on, but I hope you made it this far in the post and maybe learned something new. I realize I should have done this right when I got here, but I know way more know than I did at the beginning... and better late than never right? I'm totally not doing all we do justice either, so I encourage you to go on the website and look around for yourselves.
