Bulawayo is Zimbabwe’s second-largest city after the capital, Harare, and is home to nearly 700,000 people. It is also home to the Bulawayo Highlanders, the professional soccer club for which Tommy, Kirk, Ethan and other founding members of Grassroot Soccer played while living in Zimbabwe, and as such was the natural location for our first programs.
Kirk launched Grassroot Soccer’s flagship program in January of 2003, our initial program. Today in Bulawayo, GRS trains professional players from the Zimbabwean Men’s and Women’s National Soccer Teams to deliver 5-day behavior change educational programs to youth. Thanks to our strong ties to the soccer community and key local organizations, our strong and capable local staff continue to graduate more than 200 students per month from this effective program at a time when many other organizations have had to abandon their efforts due to an unstable political climate.
The Children’s Health Council, a Stanford University affiliate research group, conducted an evaluation of Grassroot Soccer’s Zimbabwe program and found it to be remarkably successful at communicating Grassroot Soccer’s curriculum. Please click here for more details of the study.
The Bulawayo program was developed in collaboration with the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Zimbabwe, the Zimbabwe Ministry of Education, the Bulawayo City Council, Rotary International, and various professional soccer teams.
GRS maintains a strong relationship with the Highlanders FC, a local professional soccer team whose players frequently teach in the program. Since January 2003, approximately 7,000 children ages 12-14 have graduated from the Direct Model program in Bulawayo.
Contact GRS Zimbabwe
Grassroot Soccer
56 Old Exchange Building
Bulawayo, Zimbabwe
