By GRSweb on August 18, 2008
From August 3rd-7th, more than 21,000 researchers, public health leaders, and advocates flocked to Mexico City for the XVII International AIDS Conference. The five-day conference provided a crucial opportunity for worldwide leaders in the fight against AIDS to gather, present new research, generate heated discussions, and share best practices.
In plenary sessions and research presentations, experts drew attention to recent troubling figures published by UNAIDS: 45 percent of new infections occur among young people aged 15-24, and 2.7 million people were infected with HIV in 2007 alone. For every two patients that started antiretroviral therapy in 2007, five more became infected with HIV.
“It is for the benefit of our boys and girls, adolescents and the youth, for the new generations,” declared Mexican Minister of Health José Ángel Córdova Villalobos at the opening ceremony, “that we must strengthen education for prevention.” UNAIDS Executive Director Peter Piot added, “HIV prevention now requires the same level of passion and activism that have driven the successful movement for treatment.”
With the 2010 World Cup approaching in South Africa, Grassroot Soccer is ready to drive that passion for prevention – reaching hundreds of thousands of youth with evidence-based HIV/AIDS education, engaging young adults as role models and leaders in their communities’ fight against HIV, and using the world’s most popular sport to unite young people with a vision for an HIV-free generation.
GRS had a small but powerful presence at the conference. Ian Oliver from AED and Jeff DeCelles from GRS and the Harvard School of Public Health co-led a satellite session called “The Beautiful Game: Using the Power and Popularity of Soccer to Engage Young People in HIV Prevention and Life Skills Training.” The session – sponsored by Johnson & Johnson, a major supporter of the Nawa Sport program in Namibia – touched on the history, theory, and dissemination of the Grassroot Soccer activities-based HIV prevention model. The crowd enjoyed stories from Zimbabwe to Ethiopia to Namibia before participating in a live demonstration of a GRS activity and a Q&A session that touched on partnerships, evaluation strategies, and gender norms.
The next day, GRS Director of Research and Advocacy Zak Kaufman presented original research in a poster discussion panel entitled “Scaling Up HIV Prevention in Latin America and the Caribbean.” Out of nearly 11,000 submitted abstracts, Zak’s was one of about 200 selected for oral poster presentation. Despite speaking at the same time as President Clinton, he spoke to a packed room on the effectiveness of the GRS model in Haitian migrant communities in the Dominican Republic.
Posted in News, Programs, World Cup 2010
By GRSweb on June 26, 2008
In collaboration with Baylor Children’s Foundation Malawi, the Clinton Foundation, and the Malawian Ministry of Health, GRS is embarking on an initiative to hold four community-wide Voluntary Counseling and Testing (VCT) soccer tournaments in Malawi between October 2008 and February 2009. The initiative is made possible with support from the Abbott Fund.
The Republic of Malawi has a population of 11.3 million and an estimated HIV prevalence of 14%. Of the 940,000 people living with HIV, approximately 83,000 are children. Baylor Children’s Foundation Malawi, the Clinton Foundation, and the Ministry of Health have initiated a community outreach program to improve identification and early referral to care and treatment of HIV infected children and their families. This pilot program is centered in four pilot sites around Lilongwe, serving a combined catchment area of over 500,000 people. At the health centers serving these communities, less than 200 children are currently enrolled on antiretroviral treatment.
In 2008-09, the GRS/Baylor program aims to:
- Graduate 700 youth using the GRS curriculum
- Improve identification of HIV+ youth by providing VCT for 2,000 people, primarily youth through innovative testing soccer tournament format
- Build capacity of community based role models to deliver an HIV/AIDS prevention curriculum
- Develop/document a model that can be replicated in additional communities in Malawi
- Increase awareness about free HIV care and treatment services, and to improve attitudes and knowledge about HIV among youth and adults in the selected communities
Posted in Implementing Partners, News, Supporters
By Tommy on June 25, 2008
“What if you could somehow harness people’s love of sport to do something good, like teaching kids about health?” asks Faith Salie, host of Public Radio International’s program Fair Game. Salie recently interviewed GRS Founder Dr. Tommy Clark to learn how GRS does exactly that. PRI and its affiliates broadcast to 29 million listeners each week. In the interview, Dr. Clark tells the story of how GRS began, how the curriculum works, and what is next for GRS.
Listen to the interview fairgame
Posted in News, USA
By GRSweb on June 17, 2008
Source: Haider Rizvi, AEGIS
Last Tuesday at the two-day UN High-Level Meeting on HIV/AIDS, the executive director of UNAIDS said the world is finally starting to see “real results” in the fight against the disease but that there is still “a long way to go.”
“Every day, almost 7,000 people are needlessly affected because they do not have access to proven interventions to prevent transmission,” Dr. Peter Piot said. “If the international community wants to get anywhere near universal access to HIV prevention, the world needs to significantly increase investment.”
The wide gap between need and available resources is a big roadblock to providing universal access to prevention and treatment, said UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, a situation that will continue “in the absence of a significant increase in the level of resources available in low- and middle-income countries.”
Sara Speicher of the US-based Ecumenical Advocacy Alliance said world governments “actually never met the [funding] targets,” and many still are not “fully committed” to increasing their support.
Discrimination’s severe impact on AIDS-control efforts was another topic at the meeting. “Are we not all humans and deserving of equal treatment and access?” asked Ritri Suksma, who works with the non-governmental group Coordination of Action Research on AIDS. Suksma reported that in her native Indonesia she risks being stripped of her property because of her HIV-positive status, and she noted that some 70 nations restrict entry by travelers with the virus.
Posted in News
By GRSweb on March 4, 2008
On March 4th, Grassroot Soccer was named one of three winners of the Ashoka/Nike Sport for a Better World Collaborative Competition. In all, 382 Sports for Development organizations from 69 countries submitted entries for the collaborative competition, making this Ashoka’s most competitive contest to date.
A panel of prestigious judges, basing their decisions on the entrants’ innovation, social impact, and sustainability, then selected 16 finalists. Competition judges included FC Barcelona President Joan Laporta, Nike CEO Mark Parker, and UNICEF Executive Director Ann Venema. By funding this competition, Ashoka and Nike seek to “open a worldwide search for leading innovations that use sport to improve community, accelerate development and drive social change.”
After the finalists were selected, thousands of Changemakers community members voted to select the three winners. As a winner, GRS garners $5,000, massive exposure to innovators and investors, as well as technical support from Ashoka and Nike.
“It is an incredible honor for Grassroot Soccer to be named an Ashoka Changemaker,” said GRS Founder and CEO Tommy Clark, MD. “This collaborative competition has provided an invaluable platform to showcase innovation in the Sports for Development field.”
The other competition winners are Sports4Kids, a U. S. based organization that supports good health and athleticism by providing unstaffed, low income elementary schools with a full time coach, and the Brazilian Rede Jovem Project, which sends free text messages about social, educational, civic, employment, and athletic opportunities to local youth in the hope of lessening the information access disparities that low income youth face.
Click here for more information, or to read about other entrants.
Posted in News, Supporters
