What is SKILLZ?

Our SKILLZ Approach

Promote Healthy Behaviours Through a Sport-Based “SKILLZ” Approach

Aligned with all four domains of USAID’s Positive Youth Development framework, the GRS South Africa model trains young adult mentors (Coaches) as community change agents to deliver evidence-based programming (“SKILLZ”), which harnesses the power of sport to build youth SRHR and life skills assets, improve their demand for and access to youth-friendly services, and promote adherence to healthy behaviours and prosocial norms. GRS South Africa has more than 15 years of experience partnering with USAID through health (including DREAMS, OVC, and family planning), education (Let Girls Learn), and economic empowerment (Global Development Alliance) initiatives.

GRS South Africa’s signature sport- and evidence-based SKILLZ package builds health and life skills knowledge and promotes the uptake of services by empowering youth with self-sustaining skills and health promotion strategies. SKILLZ interventions harness the powerful connections between soccer and everyday life to create age- and gender-segmented safe spaces for young people (ages 10-24) to discuss health topics including SRHR, HIV, family planning, mental health, HPV, gender norms, and other sensitive health issues. 

GRS South Africa uses soccer to attract young people and create an environment in which youth feel safe to engage around health topics through an accessible, fun, and non-threatening lens. Designed and delivered in partnership with adolescents themselves, SKILLZ programmes work in synergy with local community and health system structures to integrate basic positive health concepts, strengthen community and family supports, and facilitate linkages to services as needed.

SKILLZ Delivery Channels

In-Person, Group-Based SKILLZ Learning

GRS South Africa’s age- and gender-sensitive SKILLZ interventions can be flexibly implemented through in-person, group-based delivery across a range of 10-12 sessions. A pair of trained, near-peer mentor “Coaches” (ages 18-35) facilitate the SKILLZ sessions, which engage a group of 25-40 participants ages 10-24. In-person delivery of SKILLZ interventions includes a brief energizer to get participants moving and engaged, a soccer-based SRHR educational activity, and a group discussion. 

Given the flexibility of the SKILLZ model and depending on project design and targets, SKILLZ interventions can be conducted between a period of six weeks to six months. For example, SKILLZ programmes can run over the course of a school term or over the course of a year or more (long-term club model), while others are facilitated during holidays in the form of a camp.

Self-Guided SKILLZ Learning Material

Recognising the value of enhancing lessons learned during SKILLZ programmes, GRS South Africa developed a hard-copy, fun, and visually appealing SKILLZ Magazine that engages young people beyond in-person and digital SKILLZ programmes. 

SKILLZ Magazines are a supplemental tool within the SKILLZ package that reinforce lessons learned during the in-person SKILLZ program. SKILLZ Magazines  incorporate critical and comprehensive health and well-being information in sport-based metaphors  to flexibly engage participants on their own time and in their preferred spaces (e.g., in their homes, with their friends, in the evening, etc.). The resource (which was increasingly scaled during COVID-19 service disruptions and school closures) delivers critical health and well-being information to youth using simple but playful visuals and play-based prompts to underscore SKILLZ learnings, generate demand for services, and empower Coaches to more effectively engage vulnerable and/or hard-to-reach youth.

Digital SKILLZ

Grassroot Soccer (GRS Inc.) is reaching adolescents in other countries through their mobile phones via the Digital SKILLZ game, which gamifies GRS’s sport-based approach to adolescent engagement to reach young people with life-saving health information and life skills through mobile phones using interactive voice response (IVR) technology. The youth-friendly, high-energy, and interactive game follows young people as they join community soccer teams led by GRS Coaches, who help them learn about critical health topics. GRS South Africa is working towards solutions to reach youth through digital channels in South Africa.