“I love being part of Grassroot,” a coach said to me as I
was doing a qualitative data interview with her.
Her sentiment was not what interested me; I’m pretty sure
it’s damn near impossible to find a coach who doesn’t feel that way. What interested me more was that she simply
called the organization “Grassroot” – not by the full name “Grassroot Soccer”
or the accepted abbreviation “GRS.” This
is not the only time I’ve heard people refer to the organization simply as
“Grassroot,” and more often than not, when in the communities where we work,
the second part of our name seems to be hacked off and an s is tacked on when
people talk about us. “The guys in the
yellow shirts are from Grassroots,” you would hear, or, “I love the work that
Grassroots is doing.”
It’s important that when it comes down to name recognition,
people are opting for the word “Grassroot” over “Soccer” when conjuring up our
name. They choose to call us by a word
that I can bet most of them don’t understand and one that which I don’t think
many who even work for GRS have thought about how the organization embodies, or
does not embody, its meaning.
Thanks to GlobeMed and its globalhealthU curriculum (P.S. It
works), I have developed a greater understanding and appreciation of grassroots
health movements and believe that they are the most effective method of
creating long-lasting, effective change.
I define grassroots movements as those in which the community members,
the laymen, the ordinary folk, are the drivers of change. They are ones that challenge traditional
power structures with their “bottom-up” approach, and they are so effective
because those demanding change are deeply invested since the issues at hand
involve them directly. I’d be happy to
discuss this more over a cup of coffee, or as of recent, a rooibos cappuccino,
so I don’t need to bore you too much about my philosophy on community
development.
During his recent visit to Port Elizabeth, I was speaking
with Grassroot Soccer South Africa’s Managing Director James Donald and brashly
blurted, “We seem to put so much focus on the soccer part of our name but never
the grassroot part.”
This discussion came about when I was making the joke that
the Headquarters office in Cape Town seems like a “Little America,” much like
many cities have their own Chinatowns and Little Italies (Italys?). The team in Cape Town has a large proportion
of American staff and interns, and they’re being controlled by the Global
office in Vermont that’s chock full of other – you guessed it – Americans. James is only one of the handful of South
Africans at headquarters.
This was a question that has been on my mind recently but I
hadn’t quite vocalized it until now. We
seem to shove soccer down people’s throats (refer to the previous blog post to
read up on my feelings about that), but we seem to not care for the principle
that gave us our namesake; well, the first part of it, at least.
“How grassroots are we really?,” I asked James, a rhetorical
question that a part of me still wanted answered.
On the surface, Grassroot Soccer does not seem very
grassroots at all. It’s almost as if our
founders, interestingly enough 3 Americans and a Zimbabwean, thought the name
would fit without completely figuring out how the organization was supposed to
reflect it. Maybe our managing staff has
subconsciously stuck as close to that 3-to-1 ratio as possible. Nevertheless, from the high-level perspective,
Grassroot Soccer is not grassroots at all.
If the work of Grassroot Soccer is being controlled from desktop
computers in offices around the world by people who are separated from the
communities being affected, what role does that that leave the coaches on the
soccer pitch and the kids who they serve who live and work in South Africa’s
most vulnerable communities? If
community workers are not becoming “drivers of change,” is Grassroot Soccer
really a grassroots movement?
We can say a million times over how much we are empowering a
new generation of leaders with our staff, coaches, and youth participants. From this critical perspective, however, they
seem more like pawns in a game being led by greater outside powers instead of
true changemakers being molded into the people communities need in order to
make a difference.
In order to grapple with this dilemma, I first want to take
a step back to share an anecdote. A few
GRS staff members have approached me and my intern partner with the idea of
starting a new NGO. Obviously, I was
wary, but I heard the idea out and helped them develop it further. The NGO would be a youth development program
delivered in schools that equips students with the knowledge about the
contemporary struggles of young people in South Africa, trains youth to engage
others in these vital conversations, and molds them to adults who can mobilize
change in their communities. Who knows
how successful this will be, but it showed me that brains are working, and
Grassroot Soccer has helped cultivate creative minds of people who are
passionate about making a difference.
This is the grassroots movement.
The grassroots element of GRS doesn’t quite show in the
organization’s management, but I realize that it does exist in our sites. Not every single staff member, coach, and
participant has been privy to the “GRS Juice,” as it is often called, but there
are definitely some out there who are drunk on it. Without the experiences given to them by
Grassroot Soccer, they may not have realized their own potential to be drivers
of change. I’m not saying that each
person has to create the next great organization that will change the lives of
millions, but I realize that each time a coach works with a student, he or she
is catalyzing a grassroots movement for community health. By sharing his or her knowledge about HIV,
that person is motivating another to change their behaviors and beliefs.
This grassroots element was exactly what brought me to South
Africa to join the grassroot soccer team.
Partnership is another component in effective grassroots movements
because it allows for exchange in knowledge and resources that a single entity
may not have on its own. That’s what
I’ve seen as my purpose for being here, to forge cross-cultural partnerships, and
it’s the reason why I’ve enjoyed being a Programs Intern at the site-level: to
learn from the people who live day-in and day-out in the communities where we
work who know firsthand the issues affecting their neighborhoods to provide
whatever I can to aid in the process.
It’s their passion in the micro level that drives the organization as a
whole, and it’s my role to contribute my knowledge, skills, and perspective
that will allow them to realize their potential.
With this discussion of the importance of grassroots
mobilization, it’s sad to know that I’ll be straying away from this true
“grassroot” essence of the organization for the remainder of my time in South
Africa. In a rather sudden turn of
events, both of the Port Elizabeth and Kimberley sites in South Africa will be
closing at the end of March. The reason
behind this is primarily because of a lack of funding, and this is a tough lesson
in NGO non-profit management: if funds don’t come in, you can’t keep doing your
work, no matter how important it may be.
It’s just how the cookie crumbles.
I will be finishing off the rest of my four months in South
Africa at Grassroot Soccer’s headquarters in Cape Town, and funny enough, I
will be part of the Partnerships team. I
guess it’s a suitable role for the kid preaching about cross-cultural
partnerships, right? I look forward to
this new opportunity in my internship, almost a 2-for-1 deal it seems. I will be able to see and learn about
different facets of the organization, get to work with new people, and explore
a city that I love with great depth. But
that doesn’t take away from the bittersweet feeling I have about leaving my
adoptive home in South Africa after 8 months.
Port Elizabeth, as much as it was not exactly a place I ever
would have thought to end up, has been awesome to me. It’s no New York City, but that allowed me to
be more self-reflective in ways I never was before. And more so than the place itself, I will
miss my staff who have grown on me in many ways. It’s hard to pack up and leave to the other
side of the world, but having the Grassroot Soccer Port Elizabeth family as a
wacky support system has helped the transition immensely. Seeing the passion, dedication, and growth of
my staff and coaches is what I came here for.
They’re what I’ll miss most because they exemplify the true essence of
what this organization’s mission is: they are the real Grassroot Soccer.
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