Help GRS Win $500,000!!!!

Friends and family--

As some of you may have heard, Grassroot Soccer recently won $25,000 in the Chase Online Giving Challenge. This was an initiative on Facebook through Chase Community Giving in which the 100 charities who received the most votes received $25,000 and moved on to the next round of competition. GRS finished in the top 100 of the first round and we received $25,000!

The second round of voting starts today and Grassroot Soccer is eligible to win up to $500,000 by being one of the Top 25 vote-getting charities. In addition, a generous donor has pledged to donate $1 to GRS for every vote we receive. We need your vote to win! If you have Facebook, please take a minute out of your day and vote for GRS! Vote by going here: Vote for GRS on Facebook!

Want to know what GRS would do with $500k from Chase? Watch this 30 second video on our amazing Skillz Street program for girls to find out: Grassroot Soccer's Big Idea!

Voting ends May 25th so please don't delay! Let all of your friends and family on Facebook know as well and encourage them to support GRS!

Lots of love from Cape Town,
xoxo Sara

Zim Zam Bots!

On Sunday I returned back to Cape Town after one of the most exciting and interesting vacations of my life- to Zambia, Zimbabwe and Botswana. Not your usual long Easter break trip-- unless you're in Africa!

Bright and early on the morning of April 22, my housemate and fellow GRS intern Margaret, our friend Hannah, and I flew from Cape Town to Livingstone, Zambia. Livingstone is the town where Victoria Falls is, on the Zambia side. Hannah and I spent the weekend in the Falls, touring the Zambian side on Friday and the Zimbabwean side on Saturday. We met up with a couple of GRS Zambia interns and their friends. It was really great seeing everyone and experiencing the Falls with them.


On Sunday Hannah and I took a 6 hour bus ride up to Lusaka, the capital city of Zambia as well as the city where GRSZambia operates. We got in around dinner time and had a huge meal of Chinese with some of the GRS interns and fellows. We spent the next couple of days exploring Lusaka, seeing GRS programmes, and just spending time with our friends. Alice, one of the interns, took us to an awesome vegetable market and another larger market where a political rally was being held. The interns hosted us at their house, complete with a puppy named Kamba and a cat named Ping (and numerous unnamed spiders, rats, and cockroaches!)

On Wednesday we took another 6 hour bus ride back to Livingstone. We spent the night at a great hostel and at 7 am the next morning left for Chobe National Park, Botswana! We spent 3 days and 2 nights in the park, camping on safari. We had the opportunity to do 2 boat safaris on the Chobe River and 4 game drives in the park. We also got to camp inside of the national park! On the second night, elephants came right up to our camp, practically 10 feet from us. Chobe has the highest concentration of elephants of anywhere in the world, so we saw a TON of elephants. We even saw a one week old baby elephant playing in the water! Besides the elephants, we also saw giraffe, lions, a leopard, buffalo, an Egyptian cobra, crocodiles, fish eagles, antelope, kudu, and much more.It was so amazing being in the park for three days and being so up close and personal with the animals.


On Saturday we headed back to Livingstone. Unfortunately the great luck we had been having with the weather ran out and it poured for our trip back, including the ferry (read: rickety jet boat) ride we had to take from Botswana to Zambia. Even the damp weather couldn't get our spirits down though. We got back to Livingstone, showered for the first time in three days, and ate a huge meal of pizza and pasta. The next day we flew back to Cape Town. Luckily, Monday was another public holiday so we had a day to recover. Overall, an amazing 10 days!

Miss & love everyone!
xoxo Sara

Time is flying!

Once again, I have been reminded by the (three) readers of my blog that I haven't updated in a while. I apologize that I am not much of a blogger, but hey, at least that's one job I can rule out in my endless job search for next year. Things have been very busy here in Cape Town! I can't believe I only have a few months left here. February and March were full of beautiful weather, lots of GRS work, and a visit from the Rosenthal/Gordon/Brecker contingent. On Friday I am heading to Zambia and Botswana for a quick holiday over the Easter break. I will be visiting Victoria Falls to take in the sights, Lusaka to visit the GRS team and see GRSZambia in action, and Chobe National Park for a safari. I can't wait!

Here are some pictures from my parents' visit:







I have a few more pictures on Facebook if anyone would like to check them out. For those in the Washington DC metropolitan area, my mom took approximately 235,928,762 pictures and I am sure she would love to show them all to you (the same goes for anyone in the NYC metropolitan area in regards to my aunt's pictures)! Besides their incessant picture taking, it was wonderful having my parents and aunt and uncle visiting. We had a great time on safari and exploring all that Cape Town has to offer.

As always, miss and love everyone at home! A huge thank you to everyone who as donated recently!!

xoxo
Sara

Belated Pictures from December

Pictures from our Skillz Holiday Camp in December:


Girls playing Fair Play Soccer


A team celebrating after an activity.


Campers participating in a question and answer session about HIV facts during lunch.


Football for Hope Centre coaching team!


Kids participating in Take A Stand, an activity where the kids agree or disagree with a statement read by the coach, followed by a discussion on the topic.


Now for my personal favorite....


You might be asking why there was a (really, insanely cute, chubby) baby at our camp for 10-18 year olds. We hold the camps over school holidays to keep kids off the streets and doing something productive while learning about HIV prevention. Most of the time the majority of our participants are boys, because girls are often tasked with taking care of the house and their younger siblings when they are not attending school. One girl who camp to the first day of our camp wasn't going to be able to come back because she had to watch her brother during the day. Instead of staying at home, she chose to bring her brother with her to camp! Mums, the Centre's cleaning woman and general mom figure, along with the coaches, helped watch the baby so that the girl could participate in our activities. I can say, 100% as an 11 year old girl, I was never have given the responsibility of watching a small baby. At that point, I don't think I was even allowed to leave my cul-de-sac alone, and all I brought to camp with me were clothes and some candy.
Sometimes I am blown away when I think about the responsibility some of these kids have, whether its caring for siblings, tending to sick relatives, providing food for the family, or cleaning the house, all while trying to get an education and stay out of harm's way. I can only hope that our camps and GRS' other activities make an impact on their lives-- educating them about HIV, giving them life skills, and empowering them to speak up when they are mistreated or neglected, among other things. I know working at the camps has been a highlight of my time here.

Sara

Back in Cape Town

Wow, its been a while since I've written a post! (I feel like I write that on every post...) I am back in Cape Town after a relaxing and refreshing few weeks at home over winter/summer vacation. Things have been busy in the office, catching up on work!

Since I apparently forgot about my blog for the whole month of December, here is the condensed version:
-GRS hosted a 2 day HCT (HIV counseling and testing) tournament on December 4&5 to celebrate World AIDS Day and the first birthday of the Football for Hope Centre and tested 922 people in Khayelitsha!!!!
-My fellow interns and I took a trip to Die Strandloper for a day in the sun, eating fresh fish and other catches cooked on the fire in front of us.
-GRS held the last holiday camp of 2010 and it was a major success.
-Spent most of my free time at the beach and finally achieved my goal of being more tan than the other members of my family.
-Hosted a HUGE Thanksgiving dinner for about 30 of our friends and co-workers (okay, that took place in November but definitely still worth mentioning!)

Now that things are back in full swing in Cape Town, look for more updates!

xoxo
Sara

Ole Ole USA

This past week the US Mens Soccer team was in Cape Town for a friendly match against South Africa. The Sunday before the game, they came out to the Football for Hope Center! They went on a tour of the facility, participated in two GRS Skillz activities, and spent some time with GRS staff and Khayelitsha residents. On Wednesday we watched the match at the beautiful Green Point stadium where some of the World Cup matched were played. We were definitely a minority wearing red white & blue but it was worth it when America won!

The US Mens National Team visits the Football for Hope Center.

Check out the US Soccer blog for details of their visit and more pictures.

Front row, half field seats for the USA v. South Africa game!

Girls all decked out in USA gear!

NB: Photo credits for the pictures from the FFHC go to my housemate Jamison Merrill, photographer extraordinaire.

Jozi trip!

This past month has flown by! October has been crazy and November promises to be even busier. We have a ton of Grassroot Soccer events coming up, as well as the USA vs. South Africa soccer match and an American Thanksgiving in South Africa!

This past week I was working in Johannesburg. I traveled there with my colleague Zinhle to carry out an RDQA (Routine Data Quality Assessment) of the Soweto site, make visits to see the program’s monitoring & evaluation aspects in action, conduct interviews with principals and teachers of the schools we work with, and attend a conference with other NGOs. I got to stay with the awesome Joburg interns who were amazing hosts. We had an all-American Halloween party, ate lots of Nando’s, and watched TV, including Law & Order: SVU (something I haven’t done in a loooong time, thanks to our lack of TV in our Cape Town house). Overall it was a really great trip but it was great getting back to Cape Town!

GRS is extremely lucky to be based at the Nike Football Training Centre in Soweto, the huge township in Johannesburg. Soweto itself is a crazy place because it is a very old township and is really big. There is a middle class, despite it being defined as a township. There are nice malls, shops, houses, and people driving around in Mercedes & BMWs. However, there are also still people living in poverty, intense crime, and a major HIV problem. The Nike Centre is located in a relatively nice part of the township. For those of you who haven’t heard about the Nike Centre, it is a football (soccer) training facility which was built by Nike. It is an awesome training centre with huge turf fields, training rooms decorated like those of Nike sponsored teams, and a big office area (a few pictures which don’t quite do it justice: http://inside.nike.com/blogs/nikefootball-en__EMEA/2010/06/09/nike-football-training-centre-soweto). Working at the centre for a few days was pretty fun but it doesn’t have the same community feel that our FIFA Football for Hope Centre does in Khayelitsha. The Nike Centre is closed off to the community for most of the day so there aren’t kids and other community members wandering in and out, so it feels less connected to the community as a whole.

Despite not being totally immersed in the Soweto community, I did get a chance to spend some time in Soweto. On Friday, Zinhle and I, along with some of the GRS Soweto staff, went to one of the schools where GRS is doing interventions. We interviewed the principal, deputy principal, and one of the teachers of the classes GRS ran their program during. The interviews were really moving—all three women went on about how much they thought GRS had helped their students. They said that students really loved doing the activities with the coaches and they felt a special bond to their coaches. Therefore they were more willing to listen to the important messages about HIV that they deliver at every intervention . The teacher also spoke about student s who became more open to sharing what they had been though, whether it be dealing with a relative with HIV, abuse at home, or incidences of rape. Often students are scared to share these types of stories and their emotions but disclosing to coaches can help the healing process, show other students they are not alone, and in cases of abuse or rape a criminal case can be started. The principals and teacher had nothing but praise for GRS & our coaches and said they wanted GRS to come back year in and year out. It was great to hear this praise from the source and not just from a report someone wrote up about the organization. It was so meaningful to hear South African educators telling us how much good GRS is doing and how greatful they are for the message we are sending to their students.

In food news (there is always food news), I had a few new South African food experiences while in Joburg. In Soweto I had a kota. I was driving back from one of the schools with Zinhle and George, one of the Soweto Community Project Coordinators (CPCs) and we were deciding what to each for lunch. They suggested the kota, a local lunch. We drove to a small, open front shop in Soweto. A kota is basically a large chunk of white bread, french fries (called chips here), random meat, cheese, a combination of sauces, and lettuce, tomato and cucumber (for health, obviously). The meat choices were a little much for me (though not a crazy as Smiley or chicken feet) so I just stuck with cheese and egg, washed down with a Coke Light (again, for health...). I have to admit, it was pretty delicious, though I’m pretty sure I clogged ¾ of my arteries and undid all of the 6:15 am spin classes Tizzy & I went to. I also had my first taste of a real South African koeksister. For those of you who were at my wine tasting this summer, a koeksister is the delicious dough dipped in syrup/sugar, fried, then dipped again. They are so good and probably the worst thing for you, besides a kota. They had a platter of them laid out with tea and coffee at the conference I attended my last day in Joburg and I had no willpower to stop eating them.

I also had a chance to go the Apartheid Museum in Joburg. It’s a really cool museum with lots of pictures, video clips, and loooots of reading. I have studied apartheid in school and read a lot about it but the museum had a lot about the history of South Africa and the progression of racial relations. One of the most interesting parts to me was learning about the individuals who were a part of the anti-Apartheid movement. Everyone knows Nelson Mandela but there are so many individuals who sacrificed their lives, freedom, or safety for the cause. The museum is huge and has so much information so I wasn’t able to get through every part but overall I really enjoyed it. The craziest part is that so much of it happened during my generation and the generation before mine. It’s one thing to study slavery, the Jim Crow era, and the treatment of Native Americans in history class using dates like 1860 but it’s another to acknowledge that a legalize government system of racial segregation ended in the 1990s. It blows my mind every time I think about it.

I think this has officially turned into the longest blog post to date. Congratulations if you made it all the way through!

As always, miss and love everyone at home!

xoxo Sara