About Grassroot Soccer

Mission: Grassroot Soccer uses the power of soccer to educate, inspire, and mobilize communities to stop the spread of HIV.

Vision: A world mobilized through soccer to prevent new HIV infections.

Strategy: To achieve our mission, we continuously improve our innovative HIV prevention and life-skills curriculum, share our program and concept effectively, and utilize the popularity of soccer to increase our impact.

http://www.grassrootsoccer.org/

Grassroot Video: Who We Are, What We Do.

Friday, September 30, 2011

Wheezy

The best worst car ever!  Wheezy is our bright blue Volkswagen Jetta.  It is a piece of shit, but it has a radio.  It's hard to say good or bad.  O wait, there's more evidence to put on the table in this trial.  Wheezy loves to break down, or just break, and people like to fix the poor boy by just adding to electrical tape to the jigsaw puzzle of randomness under its hood.  The latest thing to go was our water pump.  This meant that the engine would over-heat.  A lot of heat really isn't good for the adhesive on tape.  If you guessed that the tape came off everything and then EVERYTHING broke...you are right.  We just kept filling the water pump at first - the engine would start steaming or the cap would pop off from the pressure and we'd have to pull over and let it cool/add new water.  However, Jess and I went to run errands the other day and Wheezy just couldn't take it.  The venting pipes fell apart into multiple pieces, the steering fluid pump thing fell apart, and the water was spraying all over under the hood.  Thanks electrical tape and thank you South African mechanics. 

Yay for adding a new car in our budget proposal for 2012!

VACATION!

I am taking my first vacation this weekend.  I feel I deserve it after this week.  All of our reports were due today and it was my first month of being in charge of it all.  Exciting and tiring. 

What is this vacation you ask?  Well, we (me and my 3 housemates) are traveling towards Cape Town to Hermanus tomorrow morning for the weekend.  They have a huge whale-watching festival this weekend because it's migrating season!  We get to drink wine, hang out on the ocean, eat good food, see whales, and MOST IMPORTANTLY we are going shark-cage diving.  Found a sick deal with room, food, and boat ride.  I might freak out, but right now it sounds amazing.

It's a little sad to go away though.  We are definitely starting to feel very comfortable here.  We went out last night and were able go between 3 different groups of friends we have!  Soccer players, surfers, foreigners.  It may seem silly, but this is sooo nice!

Sunday, September 25, 2011

New Brighton Spring Bash

So yesterday we had bought tickets to go to this "spring bash" in New Brighton with a bunch of the coaches we work with.  Our tickets read that the start time was 2.  Knowing this, we figured showing up at 4 would be perfect.  We'd eat, socialize, and see where the night took us.  Wrong.  Almost no one was there when we showed up except for a group of Englishmen who work for Umzingisi and, like us, do not know the proper time to show up at a function.  They turned out to be pretty cool though and we hung out and exchanged numbers. 

Waiting around for 3 hours though was a great idea.  Eventually people who we knew started to file in and we ate (a lot of awesome meat), smoke shisha, danced, and socialized.  It was pretty awesome by the end of it.  It was great to see people outside of work.  The women we work with are amazing people. 

Saturday, September 24, 2011

Week 2 Skillz Street

This week has consisted of a lot of running around doing things for Skillz Street.  Jess and I have logged some good miles in the car.  I thought I'd put up some photos for everyone to see what we are doing every day. (Thank Jess for these)


MEANWHILE:

This is what we tend to do during these sessions.  If we aren't getting supplies for coaches or setting up fields, we have to pass the two hours.  This usually manifests itself in hanging out with random kids that are around (Xhosa lessons free!) or goofing around with Siya and Ngwenya.





VIP

VIP is the head coach for our Motherwell site.  The first time we met him he told us he was 34...he's actually our age.  He says they call him VIP because he always looks like a VIP.  He really likes to dress nicely.  Here is my most ridiculous VIP story to date:

We are sitting in the office, there isn't much working going on, and this little boy is standing outside our burglar gate.  His mom was working in an office down the hall or something and this 4 year old boy was loving just standing at our door and watching us.  VIP noticed that this kid was wearing red skinny jeans and decided that he was worthy of his time.  He opened the burglar and brought the kid into the office.  He then continued to give the kid "player lessons".  He was telling him how to introduce himself, to lie about his age (no girl wants a 4 year old), and how to blow kisses. It was pretty hilarious.  It ended with this child down on one knee and holding VIP's ring.  Ridiculous.

Sunday, September 18, 2011

PE Surfer Dance

One thing I will be able to take away from PE forever is a great new dance style  I suppose it's kinda connected to the surfer culture and I would love to share with you all how it works. 

1. Bend your elbows so that your hands are up by your armpits, but leave them very loose. 
2. Keep your feet planted
3. Move your hips side to side
4. Swing your shoulders side to side
5. Let your hands swing as well
6. Bounce your upper body

YES IT IS AWESOME!

Saturday, September 17, 2011

Lion King

Did you know:

The opening lyrics to The Circle of Life (yes, you all know it) are in Xhosa and mean "here comes the lion".  awesome.  Fun fact for everyone to enjoy - I know I did.

Had a great week of work doing Skillz Street stuff.  By Friday everyone was so dead though that we ended up getting kind of goofy in the office and started taking photo copies of people (like Will's face).  After work Ngwenya and I were supposed to have a game - my FIRST one! - so VIP and my housemates came to watch.  The field is literally right across the street from our office, but some mix-up occurred and there was a boys game so we didn't get to play.  :(

Jimmy's team won last night so we went out to celebrate and ended up seeing "South Africa's best DJ".  It was a really fun night and glow sticks were involved.

In other news: SA won their second match in the world cup, it's like 70 degrees out, and I ran 8.5k today.  Looking like a good weekend.

Thursday, September 15, 2011

Skillz Street

This week has been awesome!  We started a Skillz Street program which is a special curriculum that takes place after school and for girls only.  The program has a lot more of soccer playing in it because research shows that girls who take part in team sports lead less risky sex lives.  To run this program we have been leaving the office every day between 12 and 1 and going to Motherwell or Zwide to help the program run.  On Monday I got to play in a coaches game called "Fair Play".  The coaches basically just scrimmage, but they make their own rules.  Ours were:

1. When one team scores, both teams get a point
2. When one player gets injured, the game stops and the nearest opposing team-member has to make sure their ok and give them a hug. (This resulted in a couple dives and very theatrical performaces - quite funny)
3. When someone scores EVERYONE celebrates.  After my goal everyone went crazy running around and screaming and then they all shined my shoe. Awesome!

The program runs so well too because the female coaches are amazing!  They are so energetic and focused on their girls.  It's really amazing to see.

2nd piece of important news: I had my first training yesterday with the City Lads.  I drove the coaches who play for the team to practice right after Skillz Street and we played.  Did some fitness - yikes, did a lot of ball work - yikes due to field conditions, and played a bit - yay!  Get to play in a game tomorrow.  whoo hoo.  excited.

Working on creating a sweet playlist for Shuffle right now.  When we discovered our mutual love for Trey Songz we became music soulmates.  Busy busy with that. 

Sunday, September 11, 2011

Colts

Jess and I

Watched the Springboks win their opening match this morning at Warren's with Nige and Greg and Tommo (?).  Spent a lot of time with these guys lately so here are some photos to help everyone.  Besides spending time with friends this weekend I have been busy trying to update our site's inventory.  There is pretty much no paper trail for our inventory for the past year so I have been busy updating things and now I'll probably start searching for missing/undocumented items and distributions.  joy.



Greg and I with a woman having her bachelorette party.  She pulled me backwards off my chair right after this photo was taken and you can see it on my face!

Will and Warren

Saturday, September 10, 2011

Braai

We had our first Braai together.  Bought one and everything.  It is shaped like a rugby ball and colored Springbok colors.  It's awesome.  We made chicken and boerewors and had a good time.  Jimmy debuted for the Colts today.  The lost 2-0.  Tough.  Everyone is getting excited though because SA has their first game of the World Cup tomorrow!
First Time Mashed Potatoes

Friday, September 9, 2011

Visitors From Cape Town

This week has been crazy - long, short, blurred together!  Ron (finance director) and Jerome (HR/Opps Director) of SA were on site this week.  I spent a lot of time learning about the finances of GRS and how to report appropriately and correctly as a site.  Lots of info, lots of assignments.  It has been good though.  Busy is good.

I did transport money all by myself today for the first time.  I had to take a bunch of cash and turn it into smaller bills and then distribute it.  It seems really shady when you are sitting at a desk in a dark room and handing out bills upon bills. 

It is hard to remember what all has happened this week.  For the first time we went out last night and multiple people came up to me to say hi - because we were friends.  I know people now!  That is really exciting.  This weekend will be filled with me trying to figure out inventory.  PE's records have been HORRIBLE and we need to account for everything because out USAID grant is closing out this Nov.  This is what most of my time will be geared towards for the first half of this internship I think - getting things in line for this close-out so auditing goes smoothly.  It is a bit annoying in terms of the work, but also really great experience in terms of learning how GRS operates, how non-profits function under grants, and, at a smaller level, the intimate details of PE as a site. 

Jerome also fixed our internet this week so I can check my e-mail regularly!  Feel free to write!!!!

Friday, September 2, 2011

New Brighton New Office

We finally moved into our new office today.  We let the boys finish the moving while Pumeza and I finished getting all our monthly reports together to send to Cape Town.  I suppose I will miss working out of Sithembile.  Mostly Sipalele.  He is an older boy at the school and love to talk to us.  When I first met him he'd yell out my name and then when I looked at him he would be doing something (for example, planking next to the car).  These things tended towards this planking move - nothing too awesome or exciting, but when you looked at him he would burst into laughter!  It was hilarious.  He also really liked playing the game where one intern would get another to walk outside to "meet Sipalele" and he would hide behind the door waiting for the most opportune moment to jump out at you.

Our new office is nice though and it's in the same building as the printers we use so we'll save petrol money! whooo...that's me thinking like an operations intern.

Played pick up again last night with the boys.  Silky called me Gracie last night.  I asked why.  He says, "Gracie's a soccer player."  ok.  I guess it's fitting then...I did get recruited afterwords however which is exciting.  St. George's coach asked me to come to a training session of theirs to feel out their team and see if i wanted to play.  I'm also supposed to go train with City Lads next week.  Dunno.  Transportation-wise St. George's is nice.  It's a lot closer.  Plus, they only train twice a week which City Lads train 3 - one of those being on Fridays.  It'd be so nice to play with the GRS coaches though and get closer with them...hmmmm decisions!