Girls and young women are challenging gender norms on football fields in South Africa by participating in SKILLZ Street, an innovative educational programme run by the international non-profit organization Grassroot Soccer. Daily Development caught up with James Donald, Managing Director of Grassroot Soccer, South Africa, to find out about an innovative programme that uses football to help girls learn about sexual and reproductive health. 

DD: What’s the philosophy behind Grassroot Soccer? 

JD: The main philosophy is that football is an amazing way to create a space to develop a relationship between a coach or caring adult and an at-risk youth. Young people can learn to make healthy choices and understand how they can protect themselves.

DD: What are the goals of SKILLZ Street, Grassroot Soccer’s programme for girls?

JD: We designed a programme that recruits 12–16-year-old girls to join a soccer league for five weeks. They each get a SKILLZ Coach, and there are 10 girls on a team. They learn the basics of how to play soccer, but really it is a sexual and reproductive health programme. So they learn all about pregnancy, gender-based violence and other challenges that girls face in their community. What’s exciting is that, because of SKILLZ Street, a lot of girls have chosen to play soccer because they’ve realized that it is something they can do. The girls have challenged gender norms. There is a team called RV United that came out of the programme and recently won their league. They were undefeated all season and were promoted to the regional women’s league. The knock-on effect of boys seeing girls play soccer and of girls feeling that boys are excited to watch them play is initiating really interesting conversations around gender norms. 

DD: What kinds of benefits have you seen from the programme?

JD: We do a little pre- and post-programme testing by asking the girls to complete a questionnaire both before and after going through the programme. They are asked questions about HIV and their ability to make healthy decisions, and we’ve seen a big increase in all our indicators. We don’t know if this increase actually leads to healthy behaviours, so we are also conducting a lot of focus group discussions. We are trying to see if we can use SKILLZ Street to link the girls to services like family planning or rape crisis counselling. We have a really exciting programme where the girls can use a two-way SMS system to strengthen their relationship with their coach. For example, they can say, “I want to talk about sex” or “I want a conversation about pregnancy”. About 80% of the girls who are participating in the programme are using that service afterwards to access services. So that’s a really good indication that good stuff is happening.