Grassroot Soccer is grateful to The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for being one of our first supporters. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation was a key donor for our first year of programming in Zimbabwe in 2003, and supported the Children’s Health Council to complete a rigorous evaluation of the GRS curriculum and overall model. The evaluation concluded that the Grassroot Soccer curriculum is a “culturally appropriate, internationally suitable, creative, effective way to educate at-risk youth about HIV/AIDS and its prevention.” In 2005, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation then invested in the scale up of GRS programs in South Africa, Zambia, Zimbabwe, and Botswana. Grassroot Soccer is a current partner on a Gates Grand Challenges award in South Africa, implementing a project focused on increasing sexual and reproductive health knowledge and school retention among adolescent girls.

Bohemian Foundation is a private family foundation that supports local, national, and global efforts to build strong communities. Bohemian Foundation’s four program areas are Community, Music, Global, and Civic aimed at empowering citizens and impacting communities. The Bohemian Foundation has been a key supporter of GRS’s comprehensive programming in Zambia, focusing on among other areas; behavior change education, access and linkage to health services and support groups for young people living with HIV, as well as organizational development.

As part of the CDC-funded “Combination Prevention Solutions to Reach Epidemic Control among High Risk, Priority Populations in High Burden Areas in the Republic of South Africa under the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief,” GRS South Africa is partnering with TB HIV Care to deliver combination HIV prevention interventions for high risk men 20+ years old in Cape Town Metro. Launched in 2019, over the course of this 5-year initiative GRS South Africa will support the high risk male sexual partners of adolescent girls and young women with evidence-based behavioral programming and facilitate access to condoms, VMMC services, PrEP, and HTS.

The ExxonMobil Foundation supports programs that target global health issues, specifically malaria, because it believes that good health is a springboard to opportunity, achievement and development. Grassroot Soccer and ExxonMobil have been working together since 2011 to deliver malaria and HIV prevention education to youth in Nigeria, Tanzania, and Equatorial Guinea. ExxonMobil additionally supports GRS all-girls sexual and reproductive health programming in South Africa, and has helped GRS form a partnership with Special Olympics to design and implement a malaria and HIV prevention program for youth with intellectual disabilities in Nigeria.

Grassroot Soccer's multiple USAID-funded partnerships with FHI 360 will reach over 40,000 adolescents in 2019. This includes work in South Africa delivering socio-economic strengthening and HIV prevention interventions for orphans and vulnerable youth and their households, under the BRIDGE Project - Support, Prepare, and Engage Vulnerable Youth II. GRS is also working with FHI 360 in South Africa to deliver a gender-based violence prevention and response program for adolescent girls and young women and community leaders, and facilitates linkages to services for survivors of violence, all under the DREAMS - Community Mobilization and Norms Change II project. GRS has been working with FHI 360 in Zimbabwe since 2017 under the USAID/PEPFAR DREAMS Initiative to implement SKILLZ with very young adolescent girls as part of the “Adolescent Girls & Young Women Health for Life 360” project.

The Ford Foundation seeks to reduce poverty and injustice, strengthen democratic values, promote international cooperation, and advance human achievement. Ford Foundation achieves these goals through focusing on three areas – investing in individuals, building institutions, and supporting new ideas. Grassroot Soccer is a proud recipient of funding from the Ford Foundation since 2013, enabling GRS to deliver comprehensive sexual and reproductive health education to youth in South Africa and disseminate program findings and best practices.

The M∙A∙C Viva Glam Fund is the philanthropic arm of M∙A∙C Cosmetics, and is a leader in the global fight against HIV and AIDS, supporting organizations worldwide that are working to combat the epidemic and improve the lives of people living with and affected by HIV and AIDS. M∙A∙C Viva Glam Fund has been one of Grassroot Soccer’s key supporters since 2008, playing a critical role in developing, strengthening and expanding our mixed-sex adolescent programming and HIV+ programming in South Africa and Zambia. M∙A∙C Viva Glam Fund also supported Grassroot Soccer's randomized control trial to evaluate our mix-sex programming in South Africa.

Launched in 2018, Grassroot Soccer is partnering with mothers2mothers (m2m) on a 5-year USAID “Children and Adolescents are My Priority” project in South Africa to provide SKILLZ programs to both in- and out-of-school orphans and vulnerable youth 10-17 years old in Mpumalanga. The 10-practice CHAMP SKILLZ program uses soccer language, metaphors, and activities to address key drivers of school drop-out, HIV, gender-based violence, and a lack of access to critical health services. 20% of the CHAMP participants are adolescents living with HIV and over the course of the project GRS will reach between 11,000 – 16,000 adolescents annually with CHAMP SKILLZ.

In 2011, Grassroot Soccer and the Peace Corps formed a global partnership that provides Grassroot Soccer SKILLZ curricula, training, and materials to Peace Corps Volunteers. Volunteers deliver tailored Peace Corps SKILLZ programs to some of the world’s most in-need communities, where soccer is often a strong community unifier and youth desperately need access to accurate health information and caring adults. Since the launch of the partnership in 2011, more than 2,000 Peace Corps Volunteers in 46 countries have worked in tandem with Grassroot Soccer and local community member GRS Coaches who deliver key life skills information to youth.

Launched in January 2019, Grassroot Soccer Zimbabwe and Population Services International (PSI) are partnering under the USAID/PEPFAR Going the Last Mile for HIV Control Project to implement a soccer-based VMMC, condom distribution, and HIV self-testing demand creation project for adolescent boys and young men ages 15-29 in Bulawayo and Harare.

US Agency for International Development (USAID) is the lead U.S. Government agency that works to end extreme global poverty and enable resilient, democratic societies to realize their potential. The U.S. President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) is the U.S. Government initiative to help save the lives of those suffering from HIV/AIDS around the world, the largest commitment by any nation to combat a single disease internationally. Since 2008, support from PEPFAR through USAID has been vital to Grassroot Soccer’s development and expansion in southern Africa and has enabled GRS to design, implement and monitor high impact combination prevention initiatives for adolescents. The partnership has also entered into multiple public-private partnerships, delivering joint projects with private partners including Nike, Comic Relief, The MAC AIDS Fund, Barclays, and Anglo American.

The charitable arm of energy trading company Vitol, the Vitol Charitable Foundation supports projects that promote better living conditions for children living in deprivation. To achieve this, the Foundation supports charity partners that work in four key areas of a child’s development: Health, Water and Sanitation, Education and Livelihoods. Vitol Charitable Foundation works with Grassroot Soccer Zimbabwe to provide targeted health education to youth and facilitate access to youth-friendly health services.