Firstly, I’ll indulge in a little bit of southern hemisphere bragging by telling you that I spent the best part of today (let’s say, between the hours of 1:00 and 4:00 PM) strolling through the most gorgeous collection of flowers in the world (or the small part I’ve been to) in a floral dress, a hat, and SPF 70… Thank goodness for the breeze, otherwise I might have been the slightest bit overheated.

But of course, that’s just a highlight of the adventuring that I always aspire to (have the energy for)/do on the weekends.  In truth, I more often slog around my house dreaming of decaf coffee as I attempt to recharge; the pace of my weeks, somewhat inconceivably, continues to accelerate.  

First, a disclaimer:

It’s been quite a while since I last posted.  Actually, it’s been a month and a half but I feel as though I could write a (long) novel strictly based off of the happenings of that time period.  Thus, rather than paint in broad strokes, I’m going to (attempt to) describe my experience of one, week-long event – the single most affirming intervention (or volunteer-related experience of any kind): Skillz Street Holiday, Powerchild Campus, Mfuleni, South Africa.

[For the sad folk who hadn’t the pleasure of reading my glorious previous post…]

girls can plan soccer!

A Brief Blurb on SKILLZ Street: Skillz Street is a gender specific, girls-only program designed to address the specific challenges met by females in the communities in which GRS operates.  Such programs are hugely important in communities such as Khayelitsha (where I work) where gendered power-dynamics, socio-economic inequality, and cultural traditions dramatically disempower women.  These factors, combined with the frighteningly high incidents of violence committed in intimate-partner-relationships, help render women in Khayelitsha up to three times as likely as men to contract HIV.  In addition to providing vital health information that has become the GRS’ token, SKILLZ Street aims to use soccer to empower women more generally.  First, our curriculum shows them they can play (typically they are not offered the opportunity).  

Then, over the course of a 10-week intervention, the curriculum and its incredible coaches encourage women to pursue paths of self-actualization, taking into account their extremely limiting socio-cultural context.

SKILLZ Street Holiday, a brief(er) blurb: While the average SKILLZ Street practice takes approximately 10 weeks (10 hour-and-a-half to two-hour “lessons,“ 1/wk) SKILLZ Street Holiday takes 5 days.  Because SKILLZ Street Holiday runs over the school holidays (hence, the “holiday”), it operates like a day camp.  Girls arrive at 9:30 and leave around 4 PM, we provide breakfast and lunch to all of the participants, and we spend the majority of the day bending over backwards to make sure that the girls are having fun, that they’re having fun while learning something, and that they’re having fun while learning something and living out the far too scarce opportunity to receive recognition for the fabulous females they are… just because.  Thus, in a nutshell, in 5 days of SKILLZ Street Holiday Camp, GRS packs in 10 lessons, a graduation, a day for HIV testing, and lots o’ fun.

Our beloved Skillz Street Holiday at Powerchild Campus, Mfuleni, Oct 1-5

[Mfuleni is a township that neighbors Khayelitsha, home to my very own office, the Football for Hope Center]

SKILLZ Holiday camps are somewhat notorious among GRS staff members for being the most over-crowded, over-stimulating, over-tiring experiences one is likely to face while working with the organization – this, from a community of people who, as a rule, work very, very hard for little to no pay.  Early one morning before Skillz Street Holiday Camp, I popped into the downtown Cape Town office (where all of our management personnel typically reside but not where I am based) to print some consent forms.  It was meant to be simply a stop on my way to fetching coaches from Langa (another neighboring township) and scooting directly off to work.  Anyway, as I stood at a counter and groggily checked my e-mail while waiting for HIV-testing consent forms to print, the “Director of Programs” in South Africa walked past me and (in an alarmingly friendly manner) said: “Hey Leah! How’s it going?”  I do think I stared at him for a few seconds before processing the question, heaving a biggish sigh, and saying something to the effect of: “uh, I’m tired, but it’s going pretty well…” (“tired” was an understatement, but one is careful of sounding complain-ey to the Director of Programs in South Africa).  He chuckled.  Apparently my rhetorical strategy hadn’t been so subtle.  Because he proceeded to say “Yea…”) and tell me a story.  The moral of the story being: in the four years he had been working for Grassroot Soccer, he had “lost his cool” [his words, not mine] only once.  The fateful event occurred while he was directing a Skillz Holiday Camp.  I was “assistant-directing…” Skillz Holiday is not for the faint of heart.

To start with, on the first day my team, which consisted of myself, the camp director, and 6 GRS coaches, was expecting approx. 100 girls by 9:30 AM (when the camp was scheduled to start).  Thus, by 11:00AM, with only 35 girls, we were frantic.  But, to our camp director’s credit (and in true GRS form) we fashioned up a new plan pretty darn quick.  It involved: 1) running over to a nearby high school that we hadn’t recruited (because they weren’t yet on holiday) 2) persuading those girls to walk over to our camp after they finished writing their morning exams.  3) [the most inspired incentive] offering free rides from the school to the camp (which were four blocks apart) by a pet mlungu (me).  4)  Keeping the 35 girls who had showed up at 9:30 entertained with soccer games and warm-ups for two and a half hours until the “new girls” could show up, register, have breakfast, and caaaalm down.  **mulungu is Xhosa for “white girl.”  Think gringa in South Africa.**

So I had the pleasure of driving back and forth between Manzomthombo (the school) and Powerchild Campus approximately 10 times (did I mention it was four blocks away?), shuttling at least 15 girls each time (my car has 7 seatbelts).  In fact, I did that for all 5 days (precedent is a powerful thing).  But do you know? We graduated 95 girls.  That’s a good many more than 35… at least… 60 more!

Brief Reflection: My first real clue into the awesome potential of SKILLZ Street Holiday didn’t present itself in opening circle (the song and dance battle/routine that I described from last time – shame on you who have no idea what I’m referring to… scroll up and read my last blog post).  Rather, my first real clue didn’t arrive until Tuesday, the second day of the camp, when after what had seemed to me like a first day of absolute madness, 95 girls came strutting back.  They came back after spending 3-4 hours of Monday in lessons (we call them “practices but they are lessons – lessons carefully contrived to be fun and interactive and inspiring, but lessons nonetheless). Lessons! On school holiday! All of them came back.  And they didn’t come just for the free food.  [I know this because we had an anonymous question box at the camp, and I received at least 20 notes in complaint about how cheap we were for only providing two doughnuts, 1 sandwich, 1 bag of cheetos, 1 apple, and 1 cup of juice every day for lunch.]  Which leads me to my next section…

Not just for the free food: insights into SKILLZ Holiday from my perspective –

1. I’ve never seen so much energy in one place in my life.  True, I’ve never directed a camp before.  I’ve never been a camp counselor.  But I have been a kid.  And I’ve been a camper.  And although this time around I was coming at the experience from a very different perspective (and age) I can say with absolute certainty that my camper-peers’ energy at my own summer holiday camps had nothin’ on these girls’.  They were animated when they arrived in the morning. They screamed all day.  And then, as they dragged their feet to leave camp in the afternoon, they were animated then too.  Watching them was like watching an energy geyser.  Except, they didn’t so much throw jets of energy into the air at “regular intervals.”  They threw jets of energy into the air constantly.  When they left (finally) late in the afternoons, the silence and emptiness had become so alien that it felt, actually, eerie.
2. The campers loved each other.  On the first day, the late arrival of 65 girls from Manzomthombo High School led to a palpable social divide; there were the “old girls” (the 9:30 AM girls) and there were the “new girls” (the 11:30AM girls).  The “old girls” stood in a clump and watched “the new girls” come in.  The old girls watched quietly as the “new girls” got their breakfast and started their daily energizers. At that moment, it didn’t seem as if the addition of the 65 “new girls” would constitute the smoothest of transitions.  But unexpectedly (by me), by the middle of the second day, there was one clump.  One, massive, roaring, 95 person clump.  They walked with their arms locked together like a massive blob.  They laughed.  They tormented their coaches (good-humoredly).  In a word, they were delightfully cohesive.
3. The campers loved the GRS coaches.  Actually, they even loved me by extension. [everyone wants a pet mlugu because they make such fools out of themselves... see below]





Me leading some "energizers"...



also known as "the funky chicken"

4. Anyway, on the last day of the camp, the coaches adapted a daily activity where they praise and celebrate camper-girls individually (for a variety of reasons including just being themselves).  The coaches adapted the activity by transferring the role of praise-giver – they let the girls be the praise-givers for each other in a spontaneous moment of brilliance that truly reaffirmed Skillz Street’s attempt to facilitate positive peer communities and personal confidence.  Of course, as brilliant as the idea was, the activity took about 10 times as long as intended.  Once we opened the floor for the girls to praise each other, they simply wouldn’t stop.  Still, to return to my original point (“the campers loved the GRS coaches”) in this activity, the girls created awards of praise for every single one of their coaches (they had not been instructed or encouraged to do this). That, and later in the day they forced the GRS Powerchild team to take about a billion pictures together, give out our phone numbers, and promise that we would both call them and come back to visit.  Leaving was difficult, on both ends.

Not just for the free food: heart-wrenching insights from the girls’ own perspectives:

I’m afraid that if I add too much (any?) exposition, I will detract from the incredible power of these girls’ reflections. So I will quote directly.  But I will say that one thing that became abundantly clear from the discussion that the below excerpts are drawn from is, if nothing else, that SKILLZ Street Holiday made these girls feel appreciated and recognized in ways that were so foreign to them they were both shocked and delighted. And, they were absolutely insistent that we make sure to reach other girls – because (they said) all girls deserve this attention, to be taught that they are beautiful.

** Note on where the below quotations come from: I pulled these quotations comes from a “focus group discussion” that I recorded and took notes on during the last day of the holiday camp.  Because SKILLZ Street is a new curriculum, GRS is running focus group discussions for every round of interventions.  [I had the pleasure of recording, taking notes on, and transcribing the focus group from the last day of holiday camp at Powerchild Campus.] Essentially, a focus group discussion is a structured forum for camp directors to get qualitative feedback from the girls about their experience of Skillz Street.  Ultimately, GRS tries to evaluate the efficacy of its curricula in achieving documented aims by incorporating both quantitative feedback (how many girls graduated, how well they did on their exit-health-education-tests) and qualitative feedback (how they felt about the program).

When asked the first question, “How was the program?” one girl responded:

-       We’re all girls… we’ve never been to a camp like that before.  So when you have to go home it’s like “ahhh – that time has come again!? I want more of getting to know each other and chatting, getting to know ourselves, asking ‘do I know myself now or am I being ignorant?’”

When asked which practices they liked best, one girl responded:

-       that part where we were awarded certificates! I was like ‘Oh wow? I’m actually being recognized for something good?  Something that I did or something that I am?  Somebody actually noticed me for something that I did?’ That was so nice.  I was like: ‘Wow, I’m special.’”

When asked “what did you like about the program?” one girl responded:

-       your presence [the coaches and GRS team] meant a lot to us; as coaches, you appreciate being around us and you recognize or notice us when we are around – that means our participation means a lot to you guys

When asked, “Is there anything GRS should do differently in the future?” (my personal favorite…), girls responded:

-       you shouldn’t pick participants school by school – you should pick girls randomly [from different places] because there are lots of different schools that need Skillz Street and I want them to find the information that we got!

-       We want a sleepover camp! And to see Washington!

-       You guys should have your own place where we could come and see you! Like a center, every day, for everyone!

-       Since we did a girls program for the first time, can we do it for the Grannies as well? I feel like Grannies are not being recognized!  Even if it’s not a camp – something, workshop… some of the Grannies don’t even know how to write their names…

-       We learned a lot from this.  Keep it up in the future. All the best.

In the hopes of maintaining your interest, I’ll leave the quotations at that.  And just in case their wonder and gratitude doesn’t come across, I’ll offer a few words of explanation.  First, the girls loved it. Wholly.  Unabashedly.  They absolutely loved it.  Second, they were so incredibly grateful.  For information about their bodies and their health, yes, but even more so: for the opportunities to appreciate themselves and each other, for the push to believe that they are beautiful, and for the confidence they learned as women, by cultivation and osmosis.  Without specific prompting, these girls literally and verbally affirmed every single aim of Grassroot Soccer Skillz Street: from providing vital health care information, to getting to play soccer, to teaching girls to recognize that they are, can, and will be bad-ass women, strong enough to rule the world…

Skillz Street Divas: 'nuff said.

After all, in the end, “who rules the world? Girlz.”

Love,

Leah

p.s. if you’re inspired, and would like to spread the word and/or donate, please find my information below.  My internship is on a volunteer basis, and it is through your help that I am able to contribute to such an inconceivably worthy project.  The Tuesday after Thanksgiving is “Giving Tuesday” you know… and while that day has passed, my donation box is open ALL YEAR! How fortunate! Because I am only about halfway to my target of $10,000 for the 12 months that I will be here. :-)

***Tax deductible donations! can be made online by visiting:

http://www.grassrootsoccer.org/what-you-can-do/donate/donate-to-an-intern/

OR for the good old-fashioned way, checks can be mailed to:

Grassroot Soccer, PO BOX 712, Norwhich, VT 05055

*Please include a memo on the check that the donation is on behalf of “Leah’s Internship”

p.p.s. if you have any questions or comments of any kind, you can reach me at my e-mail address, lbrown@grassrootsoccer.org. Yes, actually – I would be delighted to hear from you (not least because I might learn that someone has actually seen my blog…)

I'm not sure what the purpose of this game was... but I love this picture.

The End (for now)