In Search for One-Size-Fits-All Solutions

One of things I’ve done a lot recently is transcribe interviews and focus groups from some of Grassroot Soccer’s South African sites concerning the all-girls SKILLZ Street program.  Considering those recordings alongside some conversations and focus groups of my own, I began to think more critically about the role of soccer in Grassroot Soccer’s model.

Soccer is truly at the core of Grassroot Soccer: it’s in the name of the organization, after all.  Countless organizations out there are doing similar, stellar work in terms of youth development and HIV awareness.  Though there are many initiatives that differentiate us from the pack, using soccer is what makes our model most unique. The sport-for-development sphere that we occupy is our niche, and integrating the cultural infatuation with soccer and the need for sexual health education is what makes Grassroot Soccer novel.

In the past few months, there has been an organization-wide structural focus on impact over output, meaning that we want to ensure effectiveness of our programs amongst our participants instead of churning them out like butter.  In doing this, we wanted to bring soccer back to the forefront of our programs.  The power of soccer to educate young people was the impetus for starting the organization, so it should be our priority to keep it that way.

This begs me to question: is soccer truly effective at communicating our message?

A quick and dirty answer to this question is yes.  Grassroot Soccer is a leader in ongoing research on sport-for-development, and study after study shows that youth are gaining knowledge and confidence throughout our entire spectrum of specially-designed curricula.  I could also state the obvious that soccer is an effective hook for engaging young people. Youth in South Africa, and in much of the world, are in love with the game.  Soccer’s biggest championship isn’t called the World Cup for nothing.  If soccer weren’t an international powerhouse, our programming wouldn’t be thriving in communities across the globe thanks to implementing partners the Peace Corps, effectively bringing our curriculums to dozens of countries in 5 continents.  Soccer works.  But to what extent does soccer work?  This question came up frequently in many of the discussions I’ve had about our programs.

Many images of the developing world use this idea of soccer as a uniting force, as a tool for communication, as a universal language.  I don’t refute that capability at all.  In many of South Africa’s townships, you could see groups of kids kicking around a makeshift ball made of tied up plastic bags.  If that isn’t dedication to the sport, I don’t know what is.

I recently finished an inspiring book, Outcasts United, an account of female Iranian immigrant Luma Mufleh starting a refugee soccer club in the sleepy Southern resettlement town of Clarkston, Georgia.  Soccer became a way for her players, young newcomers from over a dozen countries, to cope with their traumas and aid in their process of assimilation.  The team bonded over their shared, but varied, histories.  It also gave them a sense of refuge, the thing they made the troublesome trek across the globe to obtain.

But this worked because those young boys, from countries like Somalia, Ethiopia, South Sudan, Iraq, Kosovo were all deeply passionate about soccer.  News flash: not everyone is crazy about soccer, even in countries and cultures where becoming a famous soccer star is the pinnacle of success.  We can acknowledge the high regard that soccer has for many, but we have to accept that soccer does not always reign supreme everywhere.

In a discussion about our all-girls curriculum, coaches suggested that there should be less of a focus on soccer.  This seems to be in direct opposition to what the organization wants to do.  However, the reasoning was sound: girls didn’t want to play it.

If you refer to my previous post, it’s important to remember that female soccer players are heavily stigmatized, and their participation in soccer is a blatant reversal of gender norms.  If a girl plays a sport in South Africa, it’s netball, a hybrid basketball-like game.   If she were to play soccer, there are often serious, potentially life-threatening repercussions.  Yes, our programs force young people to question and challenge gender norms, but this is a perfect example of where it’s hard to practice what you preach.

One of the biggest reasons girls didn’t want to play soccer wasn’t even some kind of grand societal reason.  Since SKILLZ Street happens after school, the girls are wearing their mandatory school uniforms that often consist of a matronly blazer, a crisp white dress shirt, a pair of clunky Mary Janes, and the cincher – a skirt.  This is definitely not the best sporting attire.

Many coaches themselves are not in the slightest bit interested in the sport.  In one discussion, a coach suggested, with the support of fellow co-workers, that the curriculum should be altered to include alternatives that would interest the girls more.  “Even a tea party,” she threw out, even though I’m sure nobody past the age of 5 really cares for tea parties.  The soccer aspect of the program often deterred students from attending sessions.  When someone working on the front-lines tells us to lessen our emphasis on the sport that provided our namesake, what does this feedback alert to us? 

It makes us weigh our priorities.  Which is better: delivering our program with less emphasis on soccer with the hopes of engaging a greater amount of youth or keeping our focus on the sport to be the vehicle for our messaging, but risk the possibility of lower attendance or decreased interest?

I’ve thought about this in reference to myself, as well.  I haven’t played soccer in my life, unless you count one time I subbed in a pick-up game at the Football for Hope Centre in Khayelitsha where I just ran up and down the pitch.  I have no interest in soccer, nor do I have any concept of how the sport works.  When I was the age of our target audience, 10 to 18, I was a thousand times more interested in music than I was in anything remotely sport or athletics related.  In middle school, I somehow worked the system and took choir instead of mandatory Physical Education.

If you told the young me that there was a singing program that also managed to teach about HIV, I would have been the first to sign up.  If you told me there was a soccer program that managed to teach about HIV, I would have tried to avoid it at all costs.  If I had to attend it, I may have learned a thing or two, but I would have dread going to it.  It wasn’t made for me.  Don’t even bring up the fact that I would have been sitting in a class discussing how boys should always respect a girl’s decision when it comes to sex and how boys should avoid getting girls pregnant when I knew very well when I was the same age as our participants that I didn’t like girls and wasn’t going to get any of them pregnant.  The default assumption of heterosexuality in Grassroot Soccer’s curriculum is yet another reason why it would not have been the most beneficial to me.

What this investigation has led me to conclude is the reinforced notion that no single approach works for everyone.  This is not only relevant to Grassroot Soccer but to all non-profits.  We have to come to terms with that fact.  There is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all solution.  We can’t go on thinking that we can change everybody, regardless of how much time and research goes into making our programs the most impactful.  What we can do is adapt: to identify those who would most benefit, and make a concerted effort to change those specific people’s lives.  I think that Grassroot Soccer has realized this and is making changes to their recruitment strategies and program implementation in order to make it happen.

I wholeheartedly believe that soccer can be a powerful tool in the fight against HIV, and we have evidence that has proven that many times over.  However, we need to be humble: count our wins and accept our losses.  Only in learning from our downfalls can we focus on our strengths and implement proper strategies in the places where we can truly make impact.  Our model can’t fit everywhere, so instead, we have to make our model fit where it can, and it’s in those spaces where we can and must succeed.