A Grassroot Soccer Wedding

This past weekend a former coach, Mpumie, and the Assistant Site Coordinator at the Football For Hope Centre, Lunga got married!!! I was so honored to attend the wedding and be a part of the celebration.

I was able to be a part of the caravan that picked up Mpumie from her house with all of her family and drove her to the church. It was so amazing to see the whole neighborhood come out and celebrate Mpumie moving forward for her wedding.

Wedding KILO! GRS Family Celebrates Together!

Dancing at the end of the ceremony!

New Skillz Street!

I am proud to announce that we have started our first round of Skillz Street in 2012! It is taking place in Philippi, a small township about 20 minutes away from the Centre. Here are some pictures from the first few sessions:

Team Time with Coach Nwabisa!

Coach Lindiwe and a few girls from her team!

Having fun during Fair Play soccer!

Warming up to play soccer with Coach Sisanda

RV United has continued to play hard and compete with the boys in the Football For Hope Centre Community League. They have been doing so well and enjoying it so much that Vuyo and I have decided to try to start a girls' league at the Centre!

Finally got a team picture with RV United! They are getting better every week!

Passing out donated goods to RV United! The girls were so excited!

A lil' exploitation...

A few weeks ago, I told the Grassroot Soccer interns stationed in Kimberley, South Africa that I would come visit them. Then, I got caught up in work, and ended up not being able to make it in time for the bus up there. To apologize, I sent them this video:

Sports on sports on sports

Left to right: Gcina, Me, Vuyo, Mthura, Xolani, Chris, Popie and 2 of her kids

Over the past couple months, I've continued to work on really interesting projects with really amazing people! However, I have gotten worse at blogging about it. So far this year, we have been getting ready to start programming for 2012. The first thing we had to do was recruit brand new Grassroot Soccer coaches! We expanded into 3 completely new communities this year: Mfuleni, Langa, and Mitchells Plain. A couple weeks ago, we held the training for our 30 new coaches. It was pretty amazing to see how confident they became as facilitators over 5 days. They also became much more confident and knowledgeable about HIV and AIDS.

Training of Coaches!

Warming up the coaches with an energizer!

The other exciting thing that has been happening this year is RV United. RV United was an idea that Vuyo and I came up with at about 11 pm at the HCT Soccer Tournament on December 3rd of last year. We were sitting in the car after dropping off about 15 people around Khayelitsha, munching on some left over salad from dinner, and we decided that we needed to start a girls' soccer team in Khayelitsha. The name was a collaborative effort: (R)ebecca(V)uyo United. There are less than a handful of girls' soccer teams in Khayelitsha, and through working on Skillz Street, Vuyo and I have gotten more and more interested in starting a team of our own. We continued to talk about it through the end of last year, and we finally got - not one! but two! - girls' soccer teams off the ground over the past two weeks. One of the teams is based out of the Football For Hope Centre. Vuyo did not even have to recruit the girls, they pretty much came up to him and asked him to start a team. He was visiting a friend that lives near him by the Centre, and a few girls recognized him as the head of Skillz Street. They approached him and asked him for a soccer ball so they could play in the street. In addition to providing them with a ball, he asked if they could come to the Centre the next day after school. So we had our team! Over the past two weeks, we've been getting a schedule, materials, and 2 GRS coaches arranged for them. The girls are incredibly dedicated and eager to improve. Vuyo entered them in to the U-13 Community League division (first girls' team to ever be entered!), and they played their first two games today! It was pretty amazing to see how much they improved throughout the day, and how surprised all of the spectators were to see girls out there. A few boys were mocking them, but most looked on with genuine interest and intrigue. 

First RV United Team Picture! 

Second team picture ever!

I felt a bit like I would imagine my parents felt during one of my soccer games. I think some people were a bit concerned about the screaming umlungu that kept banging on the sides of the field with excitement.

Our second girls' team (which I think we will give the same name) is based at a local school called Cosat School.  We approached the school a month ago (before the Centre-based team was established), and they were very excited about the prospect of starting a girls' team. We had our first practice today, and it was so much fun. They are all really excited to learn, and understand and speak English better than the other group of girls, so I am able to run the practices! We had a bit of a setback when we saw the grass on the majority of the school grounds more closely resembled a prairie rather than a soccer field, but we made it work.

Outside of work, I am also playing on a mixed ultimate frisbee team called Khayoba that is based out of Khayelitsha. The team actually won the South Africa Nationals tournament last year, so we are working to do the same thing this April! 

Pictures of the Coaches' Celebration

I finally tracked down pictures from our end of 2011 Coaches Celebration in Grabouw!

Everyone sitting at home base eating lunch

Everyone loves team building activities!

Relaxing with a coach's daughter, Poppy

Learning the obstacle course

Doing the obstacle course!

End of the year dinner

The coaches performed skits

All in all, it was a perfect way to end the year in 2011. The coaches were still talking about how great the retreat was when we went back to work this month. It was great to just hang out, relax, and crawl through mud with them!

A Busy December

Instead of winding down programming at the end of the year, the Khayelitsha Football For Hope Centre decided to ramp it up! In honor of World AIDS Day, we held two large events at the beginning of December. On December 1st, we hosted an Indaba (traditional word for meeting) to fundraise money for the Football For Hope Centre. The event was funded by Real People's Bank, a local bank in the area, and helped to cement our partnership with them. In the morning, we hosted a buggy soccer game for disabled children from a neighboring organization.  In the afternoon, we invited local organizations to come and learn more about Grassroot Soccer programming. Unfortunately, I was too busy running around to take pictures, so I'm working on tracking them down from other people. But the event was a great success and a lot of representatives from local government even showed up.

Only two short days later, we held a HCT (HIV Counseling and Testing) Soccer Tournament at the local Mandela Park stadium. This was a  huge endeavor, and an event we had been planning for months.  The day started with a Fun Walk from the Centre to Mandela Park to help recruit the community to come out for the event and get tested.  There were 32 men's teams competing and 5 women's teams, and there were cash prizes for first and second place. From 9:00 until 19:00, there were testing partners set up around the complex to test players and any one else that was interested in getting tested.  To promote testing among the teams, we gave teams additional points if their players got tested, making it more likely that they'd move on to the semi-finals. Since there were so many teams and games to be played, we ended up having the final game at midnight, and doing the award ceremony at around 2:00 am...at a gas station. It was the only lit up place we could find at that time of night! We ended up testing 463 people, and got to see some great soccer! But, it was definitely my most exhausting day of work yet.

Our coaches put the FUN in fun walk

Reaching Mandela Park!

Playing on the main field

The Red Eagles - the winning women's team!

Mens' award ceremony at the gas station

After these two large events, we didn't have too much time to rest. The following week we had a curriculum training with the coaches, and then we had a holiday camp the week after that. The year ended on a very good note with a coaches' celebration in Grabouw, a mountain town east of the townships. Again, I'll work on tracking down some pictures from other people. Overall, it was a whirlwind of a month, but I learned a lot and had an amazing time.  Happy holidays to all!

Miscellaneous

Well, now that I've been here for a solid four months, everything really is starting to flow fairly smoothly. It is pretty incredible spending my days in Khayelitsha and evenings in Cape Town city centre. Below is a mix of pictures from the past few weeks that show the chaos of being a GRS Cape Town Programs Intern (and I wouldn't want it any differently!).

Letter from a Skillz Street participant to her coach on graduation day

Skillz Street graduate with her certificate!

Sihle came to Cape Town with Andrew and I again -
but he was less than entertained by the wall hangings

We brought Sihle to an Ajax-Supersport game at the Cape Town Stadium!

We hosted Thanksgiving at our humble intern house for about 40-50 people!
I made the stuffing (thank you Aunt Sandy!)

FFHC staff, training team, finance, and programs interns at Thanksgiving

Interns from Cape Town, Zimbabwe, and Kimberley, SA came together for Thanksgiving!

Charlie and me, Table Mountain

The day after Thanksgiving, we took the Zimbabwe and Kimberley interns up Table Mountain
At the top, we laid out our Thanksgiving table cloth and ate some leftovers.
Of course, this meant we had to deal with many jealous stares from other hikers.

And, of course, there are always new cute kids wandering into our office to keep us off task and laughing.