Grassroot Soccer is built upon the principle that kids learn best from people they respect. GRS educators– soccer stars, coaches, teachers, and peers– are roll models in their communities.
Founded by former professional soccer players in 2002, Grassroot Soccer (GRS) trains African soccer stars, coaches, teachers, and peer educators in the world’s most HIV-affected countries to deliver an interactive HIV prevention and life skills curriculum to youth. Translating research into action and leveraging the excitement around the 2010 World Cup, GRS attracts and engages young people through schools, community outreach, and social multimedia (e.g. magazines and TV). GRS has educated more than 270,000 kids via its ‘Skillz’ curriculum, and is a leader in the sport for development movement.
Brief History
Grassroot Soccer, Inc. became a registered 501(c)3 charitable organization in 2002. Founder, Tommy Clark, MD conceived of the idea after having played soccer professionally in Zimbabwe where he witnessed first hand both the devastation of HIV and the fanatical popularity of soccer. Together with a group of friends who had similar experiences, he and co-founders Methembe Ndlovu, Ethan Zohn and Kirk Friedrich created Grassroot Soccer. The core group traveled to Zimbabwe in 2002 and with the support of advisory board member, Albert Bandura, consultants and local stakeholders, developed and piloted an interactive soccer-themed HIV prevention curriculum that was first implemented in Zimbabwe in 2003. After a positive independent evaluation of the project by The Children’s Health Council, a Stanford University affiliate group, GRS received a three-year program grant in 2005 from The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to expand its work. Click here to learn more about our accomplishments and milestones.
Click Here for a letter from GRS Founder/CEO, Dr. Tommy Clark, outlining how GRS came to be.
Our Team
Grassroot Soccer has expanded to an international team of employees and volunteers. As GRS has grown, several well-respected HIV prevention experts have served in an advisory capacity including Albert Bandura, Martha Brady, Douglas Kirby, Thomas Coates, and Helen Epstein.
Core Principles:
- Build a passionate, accountable and efficient organization
- Deliver programs through an effective and scalable model that uses football to have a significant impact on the prevention of HIV/AIDS.
- Be leaders in Sport for Development and HIV Prevention fields by creating, evaluating and sharing innovative concepts and tools.
Capability
With an annual budget of $4.2 million, 61 employees and over 300 volunteers in South Africa, Zambia, Zimbabwe and the United States. GRS delivers its Skillz interventions to youth between the ages of 12-18 every day across this geography and regularly hosts training events for staff and volunteers.
GRS’s activities are divided two areas: global activities and in-country activities. Globally, GRS focuses on curriculum development, measurement and evaluations, strategic development and financial management. In-country, our teams execute on the GRS and partner funded programs managing all aspects required to fulfill our mission and satisfy the funders’ financial and programmatic needs. In addition, outside GRS’s three core countries (South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe), the global team provides technical assistance to implementing partners who deliver Skillz interventions. GRS’s global team identifies partners capable of sustaining a football based HIV prevention program, matches them with funders, provides in-country training and ongoing technical assistance and assists in the overall capacity building of these organizations.
Through these activities, GRS engages hundreds of young role model educators (coaches, teachers and peer educators) on a part time or volunteer basis in several African countries.
Recognition
As a winner of the 2008 Nike/Ashoka Sports for a Better World Collaborative Competition, 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).
Other recognition includes MySpace Impact Awards, CNN Newsnight, CBS Early Show, Regis and Kely, A Closer Walk – documentary. Awards include: Draper Richards Foundation, Annie Dyson Child Advocacy Award (American Academy of Pediatrics), the Dartmouth Martin Luther King Jr. Social Justice Award, and the Nkosi Johnson Award (International Association of Physicians in AIDS Care).
Funding
Grassroot Soccer’s funding continues to come from three sources: individuals, corporations and foundations, visit our Partners page to see our great supporters. GRS is actively soliciting long-term support from all three of these groups, learn more about how you can help support GRS.
