- Intense introduction to the Grassroot Soccer world
2. Meeting Felix, a GRS coach in Maykwayukwa refugee settlement
Grassroot Soccer essentially uses the popularity of soccer among African youth as a way to introduce their "Skillz" HIV prevention curriculum and get community members involved as active role models and supporters mainly for youth between ages of 10 and 20. (For more information check out their website http://www.grassrootsoccer.org/) The GRS office in Lusaka opened in 2005 and has partnered with several local organizations and companies to execute its mission successfully.
One of those partnerships is with Breakthrough Sports Academy (BSA), which is a like-minded organization that has worked to create football leagues in the Mayukwayukwa refugee settlement in Zambia for children ages four to sixteen. Grassroot Soccer partnered with BSA and other local football teams that had already been founded in the settlement to introduce HIV prevention program; they refer to them as "interventions". GRS formalized the clubs and leagues to coordinate the games between teams. Rather than starting from scratch, they used the grassroot system already in place. BSA were the main partners to have already started a league tehre with 12 teams and over 200 participants. They had been keeping registration records of the number of players of each team. Meetings with coaches usually occur with both BSA and GRS coaches present so that the information shared remains consistent. While BSA and GRS have slightly different topics & lessons they aim to cover and the ways they are taught, the messages are complementary and easily co-taught. The interventions are taught before the team practices so the children are asked to arrive early to participate. It hasn't been difficult to get the children to come a little early because the GRS staff are such enthusiastic counselors (evidence of which I would see later).
GRS mentors that lead the interventions and teach the Skillz curriculum to football teams before their practices are called Skillz coaches or just "coaches". (That was a source of confusion for me at first because I had to distinguish between the actual team coach and the GRS mentor coach during conversation!) The GRS coaches are volunteers from the local community who undergo a week long training and promise to hold at least one intervention per week with the leagues they will work with. Each intervention program takes about ten weeks to complete.
The globalbikes donated to Grassroot Soccer (or more specifically the globalbike money donated for them to buy bicycles) have been used to support the Grassroot Soccer project sponsored by the UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) and in partnership with BSA in the Myakwayukwa refugee settlement in the Western Province. The UNHCR/GRS program also includes the Meheba refugee settlement in the Northern Province of Zambia. The bikes were donated to six local program coordinators (four from GRS and two BSA) in the settlements who oversee the GRS coaches. More on why the bikes are needed later...
Grassroot Soccer/UNHCR Recap of 2009 and Projections for 2010
The UNHCR program was slated to start early in 2009 but funding was delayed so the project did not get into full swing until halway through the year. in the first half of the year, GRS trained 40 coaches and BSA trained 60 split between the two refugee camps. From the 60 BSA trained, 11 did not pull through on commitments leaving 21 BSA coaches in Mayukwayukwa and 28 BSA coaches in Meheba. From July to September alone 400 children graduated from the Skillz program and a total of 1,518 children graduated in 2009. Considering their goal for the entire year of 2009 was 1,800 children, graduating 1518 children in just six months or so is a success! Before 2009, the last program conducted in these areas was in 2006. This effort was a revival of previous work thanks to financial support from partners.
For 2010, GRS wants to have 180 coaches (100 from 2009; 40 new BSA coaches, 40 new GRS). Twenty of the new GRS coaches will be specifically trained for catering to the all-girl netball leagues. Again, these netball leagues were already established in the camps and GRS will use their practice schedules as a time to meet with them before they practice. Currently, GRS is updating their curriculum to be gender sensitive because they found that majority of the football leagues were male. The netball leagues enable them to spread their message toward a female audience.
Last year, volunteers were asked to come to a introduction of BSA and GRS. After an upfront description of the demands of being a volunteer the crowd kind of "self-selected" and narrowed the field then split between the two organizations. This year, BSA and GRS expects to have all of the coaches, minus a handful, to return and do a 3 day "refresher" course before the interventions start again.
The eighty new coaches will have to go through a more stringent application process. The popularity of the program in the community naturally leads to quasi-interested people trying to become coaches without serious dedication to the goals.
Settlements
After training the coaches choose the leagues and locations they will work with. Understanding the dynamics of the refugee settlements is crucial in order to understand how this can be a pretty complicated process.
The settlements are broken into Zones; each zone is like a neighborhood and usually have congregations of similiar nationalities within each one. Meheba is the largest of the two and has Zones A to G. It can take over 1.5 hours to walk from Zone A to Zone D, where all the ministry offices are located. Meheba was opened in 1971 for Angolan refugees who were fleeing from the Portugese during the Angolan Revolution. In the 1990s, Meheba started receiving refugees from the DRC, Rwanda, and Burundi.
The different nationalities of course speak different languages--Kenyan or Ugandans speaking Swahili, French and African dialects of Angolese, Congolese, Mozambique speaking Portugese. Even the different areas of Zambia have different dialects: Luvalli in the Northern Province, Bemba in central provinces and Northern, Lodzi in the Western Province, and Nanja in Eastern Province. There are easily 30 nationalities in each refugee camp and the number of languages even more diverse. So the coaches tend to work in the Zone they live because they understand the local language and inherent culture. The interventions and graduations are conducted in the local languages with planning efforts of the local program coordinators. The local program coordinators visit the various zones to oversee the graduations especially. This is also important because it takes so long for the coach to travel just through their own Zone; it takes even longer to travel to another province.
The settlements are in isolated, rural areas isolated from towns and cities. The closest town is about 2 hours by car and Lusaka is another 5-7 hour bus ride from the settlement. The placement of the refugee settlement was quasi-intentional. They wanted to isolate the refugees in order to limit their mobility to town and integrate into the workforce. The thought process being that there are not enough jobs for Zambian citizens so refugees should not take limited job opportunities available. There is also a concern for safety among potentially clashing ethniticies and the stigma & discrimination against refugees in general. In order for refugees to leave the settlement to come into town they must receive a pass from UNHCR and the pass usually lasts for a maximum of 14 days to visit Lusaka at the farthest.
When the GRS team based in Lusaka travels to visit the refugee settlements, it takes all day to get there. They will stay at the camps for at least a week to meet with the local program coordinators, visit as many interventions and graduations as possible. They visit at least once a month. Along with the caravan of staff they find a translator along the way as they travel to the different zones.
The settlements are not only large in size but massive in population as well. Meheba is 720 sq km and can have up to 120,000 people there; right now it's about 15,000. There are about 10,000 refugees in Mayukwayukwa camp. Since Mayukwayukwa opened in 1966, there are complete families that were born and have lived their entire lives in the refugee camp. Often, the grandparents were the original expatriate/refugees while their children and grandchildren were born in the refugee camp. This makes repatriation difficult because these generations have no one and nothing to go to in their "home" country. These people are still considered refugees. The UNHCR has conducted repatriation convoys such as offering free transport, $500 US to every repatriating refugee over the age of 18 and $50 to those under 18yo.
Meheba was supposed to be closed down after many Angolans voluntarily repatriated, but repatriation ended after the Angolan war reignited in 1998. Repatriation of Rwandan and Burundi refugees have still shown to be unsuccessful. THe GRS staff revealed the frank honesty that some of these refugees have expressed. For these refugees, the bitterness of the Rwandan genocide is very real. They know that if they were to return home they would find the people that murdered their family and are honest to say that they would simply flare the ethnic war by trying to kill the "original perpetrator".
I was impressed to hear that the ministry keeps very detailed records of who and how many people are in the camp. According to the GRS staff, there are Road Chairmen that report data on births, deaths, repatriation, etc. to zone committees. The road chairmen are simply citizens that are in charge of reporting what happens to the families on their street. The zone committees keep the ministry offices updated as a result. The numbers of people are the camps are in constant flux when there are convoys in and out.
Skillz Program
Each intervention begins with a "pre-test" which is a 15 question survey assessing how much information the kids now about HIV/AIDS. For instance, one question is "Having sex with an older partner increases my risk of contracting HIV" and the kids have to circle "Agree", "Disagree" or "Not Sure". After the completion of the intervention, the children answer the same questions as the "post-test" to see how much they have learned over the course of the program.
The curriculum is taught through games and discussion. They are in the process of updating the curriculum but the format and overall message of each intervention session essentially will stay the same. (I got a copy of the booklet they distribute to the coaches) They keep the kids engaged through interactive song/activities they call energizers; it reminds me of games at camp that we used to keep the girls moving, active, and excited (and usually to kill some time!). Smaller energizers are incorporated during the discussions to encourage participation and create a supportive atmosphere while covering some heavy stuff. Each intervention has a distinct, specific message the coaches relay using analogies from football; such as "building your team" as a support network to prevent the spread of HIV and knowing how to "make your move" to stay safe.
Felix's Bike
Felix is one of the local program coordinators at Mayukwayukwa that received a globalbike. It was great timing because he was in Lusaka visiting for the week. Because of the transportation and logistic complexities of visiting Mayukwayukwa GRS did not have the money in the budget (as it is the end of their finanical year) to make a trip out there. However, I got a very lengthy video interview with him about the use of the bike.
As a local program coordinator, he needs to travel to the different zones to meet with coaches and conduct graduations. The bikes" cut the travel time in half" and makes it easier to be dedicated in meeting those he should. Since his work with GRS is a volunteer position, he has other daily activities he needs to accomplish after visiting the camps. More specifically, things he needs daylight to do because there are limited security lights in the camp so time is of the essence when racing the sun to get everything done. Visiting the interventions is crucial in order to make sure the curriculum is being well-taught and the program remains effective. Felix is also in charge of seeing IF the coaches are holding their interventions as well.
Another major task of the LPCs are to maintain contact with the Lusaka GRS staff because they cannot be in two places at once. However, those of us in the developed world take telephone access and communication for granted. Telephone lines do not line the streets of the refugee settlement so communication is very limited. Felix used to have a very disconnected relationship with the Lusaka staff only having the time to get to the phones in the ministry zone on rare occassions and usually waiting for their monthly trip to update them on everything. Now Felix is able to quickly pedal to the phone lines and provide short updates or planning discussions with the Lusaka staff.
I inquired about the maintenance of the bike and the GRS quickly admitted to buying cheaper bikes than they had intended. They proposed they needed 4 bikes but ended up needing 8 total for the all the local program coordinators. As a result they bought 6 bikes from money donated by globalbike and 2 from their own budget. They bought the Speciall 5-55 brand bikes from a Lusaka bicycle shop because they heard the bikes in the town near Mayukwayukwa were not high quality. Felix said he hasn't had many problems with the tires like I had heard before. Last year he had to get the pedals fixed a few times for 16,000 kwacha, which isn't too bad. The rain got to the chain so he had to have that replaced once for 25,000 kwacha as well.
GRS had planned on buying the bikes from Cycle Mat for 630,000 kwacha each. I also found out that the Zambikes or the "zambulance" bikes that have an base in Lusaka sell their bikes for about 530,000k.
Felix is a soft spoken man but obviously well experienced on the realities of working in the refugee settlements. The video interview with him was followed by another meeting with the GRS Lusaka staff that are in charge of the UNHCR program. While majority of the day was simply sitting in the office talking, they offered some great insight as to improvements for globalbike. That'll be Day 9 Part B...
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