Footballers for Life
Footballers 4 Life is a national intervention programme conceived by retired PSL players and Matchboxology, guided by JHHESA, with funding, endorsement and support received from USAID and PEPFAR. The coach use their celebrity status to address everyday issues that individuals (particularly men) face, i.e. HIV, sexuality, finance, drinking, drugs, handling stress, violence and problem solving.
About You
Section 1: About You
First Name
Claire
Last Name
Rademeyer
Website
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Footballers-For-Life/115999951751722?v=info#!/pages/Footballers-For-Life/115999951751722
Organization
Footballers For Life/Matchboxology
Country
South Africa
Section 2: About Your Organization
Organization Name
Footballers For Life/ Matchboxology
Organization Website
Organization Phone
011 442 1925
Organization Address
The Workshop Building, 70-7th Avenue, Parktown North, JHB, South Africa
Is your organization a
For‐profit
Organization Country
South Africa
Your idea
Name Your Project
Footballers for Life
Country your work focuses on
South Africa
Describe Your Idea
Footballers 4 Life is a national intervention programme conceived by retired PSL players and Matchboxology, guided by JHHESA, with funding, endorsement and support received from USAID and PEPFAR. The coach use their celebrity status to address everyday issues that individuals (particularly men) face, i.e. HIV, sexuality, finance, drinking, drugs, handling stress, violence and problem solving.
Website URL
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Footballers-For-Life/115999951751722#!/pages/Footballers-For-Life/115999951751722?v=info
Innovation
What makes your idea unique?
Football is a passion of the people so using footballers to communicate a message to those people creates instant interest. From there what creates the connection is that the footballers have come from similar communities and they know what it is like to struggle against alcoholism, HIV, lack of finance and a host of other issues.
With Footballers For Life, our retired professional players are trained in facilitating and educated in life skills and wellness so that they in turn can educate and uplift communities. Their mentoring skills and belief in personal development gives communities hope and the knowledge to do something proactive about their position. The success stories that the coaches have inspired are heartwarming.
When dealing with adults, coaches make use of their Footballers For Life curriculum and when dealing with the youth, use the highly popular Scrutinize facilitation kit (this is HIV-orientated). The coaches are
Do you have a patent for this idea?
Impact
This Entry is about (Issues)
What impact have you had?
Footballers for Life have interacted with over 40,000 people in the last two years and now have a Facebook following and peer education programme called ‘Assistant Coach’ which leaves a lasting source of knowledge and inspiration in communities.
F4L also have a strong presence in Correctional Facilities with several inmates declaring their HIV status as a result of a visit by the coaches.
Figures achieved since Oct 2009 to end May 2010 in the categories of Abstinence and Be Faithful (AB), Other Protection (OP) and Counseling and Testing (CT):
Cumulative Total Targets Progress
AB
TOTAL 15,583 12,000 129.86%
OP
TOTAL 10,152 12,000 84.60%
CT PROMO
TOTAL 16,319 12,000 135.99%
42,054 36,000 116.82%
Problem
The problem being addressed is the challenge of not just addressing men, but connecting with them in a way that promotes a true up take of the information and the best chance of changing self-defeating behaviours. F4L methodology is highly involved and participatory and, is designed to be applied to real life. When compared to topics that are quite passively taught, the F4L approach has key life skills being internalized at a deeper yet more assessable level. Added to this, the change agents are men that participants can relate to, and this consolidates connectedness.
Actions
The Coaches’ facilitation skills and knowledge levels are checked, supervised and improved regularly to ensure the programme is offering the best possible training. The content the coaches work with is highly researched and of a high quality, and is linked to national social campaigns. Pre and post session questionnaires are analysed on a monthly basis followed by feedback sessions with the Coaches. Despite making significant inroads in communities, donor funding is becoming limited and so Footballers For Life is making inroads into workplaces that provide revenue to ensure sustainability of the programme.
Results
We anticipate a take up of the programme by other workplaces once the success of the programme in such settings has been demonstrated. We expect to roll out more extensive curricula to their workplaces and develop additional content to be trained. Such growth would require additional retired footballers joining the team and being trained as F4L facilitators.
What will it take for your project to be successful over the next three years? Please address each year separately, if possible.
2010-2011: we require a major contract for which we have applied to be signed. This will ensure the programme will have the funding to continue its community outreaches for the following year, plus for the programme to gain revenue-earning credibility. This will ensure our high quality levels can be maintained and that further contracts can be sought.
2011-2012: contracts from previous years should be renewed and additional contracts gained. Additional coaches and staff members should be hired to support the growing programme. Development into additional modules and training requirements would be identified and actioned. Once again, quality levels should be sustained.
2012-2013: growth of the programme and its intentions should be carefully monitored. Changes in communities and donor funding should be monitored and appropriate (re)action taken. Quality and attention to learner needs would continue to be a focus.
What would prevent your project from being a success?
A severe cut in funder’s budget, without an alternate revenue stream having been established, would restrict the programme and render it virtually impossible to operate.
How many people will your project serve annually?
More than 10,000
What is the average monthly household income in your target community, in US Dollars?
$100 ‐ 1000
Does your project seek to have an impact on public policy?
Sustainability
What stage is your project in?
Operating for 1‐5 years
In what country?
South Africa
Is your initiative connected to an established organization?
Yes
If yes, provide organization name.
Our umbrella company is Matchboxology
How long has this organization been operating?
1‐5 years
Does your organization have a Board of Directors or an Advisory Board?
Yes
Does your organization have any non-monetary partnerships with NGOs?
Yes
Does your organization have any non-monetary partnerships with businesses?
Yes
Does your organization have any non-monetary partnerships with government?
Yes
Please tell us more about how these partnerships are critical to the success of your innovation.
As discussed above, F4L has worked in these entities and provided meaning to their training sessions. These interactions have provided F4L with experience and proof of success that will form a base of our applications to other organizations to be paid for our training.
What are the three most important actions needed to grow your initiative or organization?
1.Alternate revenue source: this will ensure that as donor funding decreases, the programme is able to continue to operate and grow. To achieve this, sustained efforts are required along with high levels of training quality.
2.Our roll out of the Assistant Coach peer education programme, successfully managing the growth of our Facebook group and intensifying our marketing and public profiling efforts that will assist in growing the programme.
3.The ongoing experience of the Wellness Coaches means that going forward the Coaches will become trainers and not just implementers. This will increase our reach, profile and sustainability.
The Story
What was the defining moment that led you to this innovation?
Footballers for Life (F4L) was set up as a direct response to a call for male focused HIV interventions by The South African National Aids Council (SANAC) and the Government’s National Strategic Plan for HIV an AIDS. The thinking behind this highly effective innovation was that in order for the recipient of the training to achieve maximum connection with the information, firstly they have to feel a maximum connection with the person who is delivering that information! Men are far more likely to connect with a jacked up, authentic, ex-football star who is ‘real’ as opposed to a disconnected ‘HIV expert’ who merely focuses on content or generic approaches. Our challenge was firstly to get ex-footballers to fully grasp the module content and secondly, to train them on how to facilitate in a variety of settings and with a variety of target groups.
Tell us about the social innovator behind this idea.
Several personalities were involved in the development of this idea, specifically the creative and developmental experts from Matchboxology (including Thulani Grenville-Grey, Cal Bruns and Racuni Naidoo) and JHHESA funders and communication experts (Richard Delate, Mandla Ndlovu).
How did you first hear about Changemakers?
Personal contact at Changemakers
If through another, please provide the name of the organization or company
50 words or fewer
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| F4Life-Boksburg_prison_April.jpg | 1.16 MB |
| F4Life_Silver__Ikusasa.jpg | 1.36 MB |
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Comments
Hello, I read your project. I like what coaches are doing, but... How will people emulate and reproduce their learnings gained through your program? I have no doubt your project has good intentions. But the critical point is how will it go on beyond your own good will.
I feel that this is a weak point of all projects, which tend to go OK as long as there's someone extending money for things to happen.
I think that part of the success for any kind of project, social or business oriented, for profit or non-profit, is to achieve success through individual and group life learning experiences, that somehow copy the grass-roots of a project and redefine it according to their own lenses. Meanwhile, it seams more motivated by pitty and patternalism, than responsibility and social awareness.
In our project, we have similar challenges. What worked for us is to really dive into understanding local realities, and designing solutions based on a holistic view of "problems", and actually defining problems as an integral part of solutions. Football doesn't occur outside a context.I invite you to look at our project, that's starting in Cuevas, Samaipata, in Santa Cruz, Bolivia.
For us, it's crucial to consider economic and cultural sustainability of any endeavour. If possible, gradually replace NGO funding, with two-way services with profit-oriented organizations.
We are generating possibilities, step by step, for football to be a core engine to generate economic opportunities. Watch our project http://www.changemakers.com/en-us/node/82754 where we are building a public space to train "rules of trust" while playing football and doing other activities in the same turf. The idea is simple: people value a space that means a lot to them, and a valued place becomes a leverage to generate sustainable wealth.
In Bolivia, football fields are highly valued by local communities, and they take care of them. And they are equivalent to the "marktplatz" or the "marketplace" in European countries. You may clearly see this in places such as Cuevas: where there's no football field, hence there's no places to exchange products or experiences or fun. This creates absurd situations, ie. neighbors buying local produce in a regional market, after it's traveled back and forth more than 250 kms.
We are creating a field for our town, because we are farmers and like to play & watch footbal, men and women of all ages included. And what's best, besides playing, families are starting to generate better conditions for generating better conditions for to sell their crops and products.
Hello, and thanks for your comments. I will try to respond to your points, and try not to respond to some negative assumptions regarding ‘goodwill, intent, pity and paternalism’ (I’m sure we’ve both been in the field long enough to assume that, given our countries’ political and social histories we would, by now, be vigilant and visionary enough not to roll out our programmes with the kind of underlying patronizing ethos and misplaced motivations you imply. The recipients of our programme are not passive, needy, nor hopeless sponges who will accept any intervention given to them, they are post-apartheid South Africans who can smell the stench of paternalism a mile off!)
That said, let me deal with some detail. I think your concern about reproducing learning is an important one and indeed this year, our funders have identified ‘systems strengthening’ as a primary objective for all projects. In fact they will not be funding those partners who fail to show that sustainable impact can be maintained even with (impending) reduced funding.
There are two kinds of recipient to our various curricula and tools. The first experiences the topic, completes exercises, engages in discussions and completes homework. Z-cards (mini booklets) with the content are takeaway tools. The coaches revisit every 2 months to review and consolidate insights, knowledge and ultimately behaviour change.
The second type of recipient is one who has gone through our Assistant Coach programme that is essentially a peer education cascading model.
Coaches enlist experienced community workers, take them through a simplified 6 modular training, and critically focus on how to present, connect and deliver information in a style that will achieve maximum retention on the part of their recipients. Assistant Coaches are affiliated to F4L, given tools and branded merchandise (t-shirts/caps) and maintain their connectedness to the program using social networking technology Facebook.
Prior to rolling out a geographically based Assistant Coach intervention, we conduct a base line questionnaire that investigates current understanding of the topic areas covered in the trainings in the community in which the Assistant coaches will work. 6 weeks later we return and individuals are given the same questionnaire. We then analyse impacts made or not, and depending on the results we then tweak the Coach’s training to emphasise or re-work topics that seem to be more difficult to grasp.
So whilst the 1st type of recipient is encouraged to share their experiences with others they are not tasked with reproducing their learnings per se. The Assistant Coaches however, are all about transmitting the learnings and have ongoing contact with F4L (Assistant Coaches are not paid).
Like you, we do not profess to understand all the nuances of local realities and pride ourselves on our model’s ability to adapt and respond to a wide range of contexts. We gain information and respond according to that community’s needs. Also the fact that our Assistant Coach programme recruits community workers means topics and approaches remain relevant.
Like you, we aspire to a holistic approach to our programme. Our core business is HIV prevention, but every topic we cover relates and is interrelated to form meaningful Wellness.
We agree that it is crucial to consider economic sustainability and are currently converting ourselves into a non-profit section 21 company so that we can become more self sustaining and less donor dependant. This will also mean that we can be more responsive to a community’s needs by developing new indicators and not solely as dictated by the funder.
I note your coments about the value of football fields, and that sounds like a useful platform from which to roll out your interventions. Just to clarify, our programme doesn’t use football ‘the game’ but more uses the cache, and interpersonal connectedness of using retired footballers as the behaviour change catalysts and change makers (we can and do hold 5-a-side tournaments and football-based exercises during brand building events, but this is not our core methodology).
Once again thanks for your interest and we will look at your project that’s starting in Cuevas. Let’s hope the positive echoes of the World Cup assist our programmes.
Thulani Grenville-Grey
Chief Trainer and Programe Developer
Dear Thulani,
thanks for depicting more features of your programme. I've been wanting active football teams to visit Cuevas. Didn't thought about the value of ex-players. Now that I've furthered my understanding of your core engine in your project I see it's value.
I wonder if there are local people that were really good football players too, and what life outcome did they have. As far as Cuevas, people in their 40s continue playing football. Older local men (40s, 50s), all of them, played football before, and some still do. Are there Senior Championships in South Africa too?
I haven't really thought about what's going on with the local elders.
Since your project is more experienced in retired football players, have you seen any relevant impact on your goals, regarding what the local elders say and do? Local elders, in my case in Cuevas, hold "invisible keys" that may or may not open doors regarding support to activities or common goals.
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