Scoring goals for healthy futures: the power of soccer for change

Image © Grassroot Soccer

Oak Foundation partner Grassroot Soccer uses this popular sport to reach young men with valuable information about relationships, sexual health, mental health, and more.

Growing up is a time of change, which is exciting, but challenging too. Sometimes what struggling young people need is “someone to just sit down and listen,” says Dennis Dube.

That’s what Dennis is doing through his work with adolescent boys at Grassroot Soccer (GRS). This global adolescent health organisation leverages the universal appeal of soccer to reach adolescents, helping them build healthy relationships and make choices that will set them on a path to thrive.

The idea of mental healthcare is “still a foreign language” to some people, says Dennis. A lot of people don’t know “how to start referencing it whenever someone is feeling or facing certain challenges.” In terms of the young male population especially, boys can end up struggling to express their difficulties, and have “a lot of bottled [up], mental [health] related challenges.” Such a situation can also lead to struggles when it comes to talking about physical health and asking important questions about relationships and sexual health.

This is where Grassroot Soccer comes in. GRS trains its Coaches as community change agents to deliver an evidence-based SKILLZ curricula in both single-sex and mixed groups. GRS’s innovative soccer-based programming, delivered in schools, soccer structures, and community centres, equips adolescents with information and life skills related to critical health issues like gender, mental health, HIV, sexual health, and relationships. GRS takes an integrated approach to adolescent health by recognising the interconnectedness of young people’s most pressing health challenges, while also focusing on the positive determinants of a healthy adolescence, such as education and employment, to ensure adolescents stay on positive health trajectories well into adulthood.

Find out more about GRS by watching the inspiring video below:

A global movement

Dennis is proof that the programme works. Though he’s worked as a global staff member at GRS in South Africa for eight years now, his first contact with the organisation was as a participant in the SKILLZ     programme, before later becoming a Coach. His transition shows how GRS can have a strong, positive influence on young men, helping direct their lives to benefit them as individuals, and their community. With the use of soccer language making traditionally stigmatised concepts normalised and non-threatening, GRS is uniquely placed to reach young men through a medium they love.           

GRS has also scored promising results regarding improvements in building gender equitable attitudes through its programmes. Ratanang Phusoane, a Master Coach with GRS, says that when you start praising young men and adolescents, “they start showing positive behaviour. The more you praise them, the more they project the positive behaviour.”

Oak Foundation supports Grassroot Soccer’s work through its Prevent Child Sexual Abuse Programme, under the Men and Boys priority funding area, which seeks to support efforts that scale up solutions that promote positive masculinity and healthy relationships. Grassroot Soccer works to positively shift gender norms among boys and men, ensuring that they make a healthy transition to adulthood, become agents of change in their communities, and advocate for their female peers and partners.