Celebrate Solutions: Skillz Street Changes the Game for Girls in South Africa

By: Elise Braunschweig; Grassroot Soccer is a winner of the Women Deliver 50

South Africa is enduring one of the world‘s most severe HIV epidemics with an adult prevalence rate of 16.9%. Research shows that three inter-related risk factors—harmful gender norms and gender-based violence, multiple partners, and age-disparate sex—are driving the epidemic and that HIV is disproportionately concentrated among women and girls.

Responding to this research, Grassroot Soccer (GRS), an international HIV prevention NGO that uses the power of soccer to educate, inspire and mobilize communities to stop the spread of HIV in sub-Saharan Africa, has developed a groundbreaking initiative that empowers young women as community leaders in the fight against HIV and AIDS. Skillz Street, named to the Women Deliver 50 list as a solution that delivers for girls and women worldwide, is an evidence-based intervention designed for adolescent girls that combines GRS’ HIV prevention curriculum with fair play soccer, sexual and reproductive health and life skills, HIV Counseling and Testing, and access to community services.

Structured as a 10-session after-school soccer league for girls aged 12-16, Skillz Street challenges the destructive gender norms fueling the epidemic by transcending barriers for girls’ participation in sport while empowering young girls with safe spaces to develop negotiation and mediation skills, learn about sexual and reproductive health, and gain self-confidence and self-esteem. Skillz Street was launched in the township of Khayelitsha, on the outskirts of Cape Town, South Africa in 2010 and has grown to five sites across South Africa in 2011 and 2012.

GRS trains local community role models—soccer stars, teachers and peer educators—as Skillz Coaches who are equipped with the knowledge and facilitation skills needed to make an impact on the lives of the youth they reach.

Thirteen year-old participant Thandiwe explains: “I prefer talking to my coach [about HIV] because I talk about everything with my coach. My mother would say, ‘Oh now you think you are grown up talking about these things.’ If I talked to my parents about sex they would think I was having sex, but I just want to know.”  Her sentiments are echoed by her coach who explained, “What I have noticed is that those topics [of reproductive health and pregnancy]—[the participants] don’t discuss them at home, so when they get to Skillz Street, they ask.”

The latest research shows that combination prevention programs – behavioral, structural, and biomedical – are the best solution to tackling the AIDS epidemic. Skillz Street uses soccer as the hook to reach marginalized young women, challenging widely held, structural social norms while providing participants with access to critical sexual and reproductive health services, in particular HIV testing and treatment. During one of the Skillz Street practices, participants have the opportunity to learn their HIV status—many for the first time.

During 2011, GRS ran 20 Skillz Street leagues across five sites, trained 120 coaches, graduated more than 2,100 young women, and tested 1,018 girls for HIV. Through a mixed-methods evaluation, Skillz Street showed very strong evidence that participants improved in HIV-related attitudes and self-efficacy.

Momentum behind this initiative is growing fast, and major players in the fields of HIV prevention and women’s empowerment have begun to take notice.  After taking the field with Skillz Street participants in Khayelitsha in 2011, UNAIDS Executive Director Michel Sidibé celebrated the program, noting, “Grassroot Soccer is restoring dignity and building self-esteem of young girls living in a challenging environment, transforming them into actors for the HIV prevention revolution.”

In 2012, GRS aims to build on this momentum, taking the intervention to scale in South Africa and reaching new geographies through GRS and partner programs across Sub-Saharan Africa, working towards a Clinton Global Initiative Commitment to reach 10,000 girls by 2014.

To date, close to 500,000 young people have graduated from GRS programs. By the next World Cup in 2014, Grassroot Soccer aims to educate one million young people about HIV and inspire them to live healthier, more productive lives.  

Photograph courtesy Kristin Gladney Photography