Hope Solo and Kia McNeill Team Up with The Grassroot Project in South Africa

On Tuesday, June 15, and Friday, June 18, 2010, pro soccer players and AFH member athletes Hope Solo and Kia McNeill had the opportunity to spend time with a very special group of kids in Soweto, South Africa.

For this year’s World Cup, the Grassroot Project in Washington, D.C. partnered with Grassroot Soccer in Soweto to bring together 20 kids participating in these programs. The mission of the Team Up campaign is to unite at-risk youth in a weeklong cultural exchange and HIV/AIDS education program to bring the global battle against AIDS to the 2010 World Cup.

Leading up to the Team Up event in Soweto, the children were pen pals with one another. Once they united in South Africa, they spent their mornings playing soccer together and participating in HIV/AIDS awareness programs that built upon the curriculum they had already completed. Each afternoon they had a cultural visit, and then debriefed on what they had learned and what they hoped to do once the week was over.

On Day Three of the program, soccer stars Hope Solo and Kia McNeill joined Team Up. They led soccer drills and facilitated a conversation about the children’s passions and goals. The children were ecstatic to meet two professional soccer players, and gained encouragement and inspiration from Hope and Kia.

On Day Six Hope and Kia returned to Team Up for a cultural visit. They joined the children and staff at Nkosi’s Haven – an AIDS orphanage for children whose parents are either in the terminal stages of AIDS or have died of the disease. The Team Up kids played with these children and tried to connect with them through several activities.

Tyler Spencer, founder of The Grassroot Project, explains, “There’s so much stigma and taboo around this issue [and] the kids really want to work on that.” The kids hope to accomplish this by talking about the disease and prevention to their peers.

The Team Up campaign has had as much as an effect on the adults participating in it as it has had on the kids. Jake Miner, a Grassroot Project coach and member of the Varsity crew team at George Washington University, says, “I think the Grassroot Project’s awesome because you have the chance to forge relationships with kids that otherwise don’t have those kinds of relationships in their lives…you really get in touch with your community.”

Hope and Kia, after spending two days with Team Up, have also been affected in lasting ways. Hope explains how much she has learned from the kids and how inspired she is by the work they are doing to reach out to their communities. She reflects, “What they gave me these past two days is something I’ll never forget.” Kia also describes the ways in which her experience with the Team Up youth has been life changing. While in Soweto she told the children, “Of all the things that we’ve done in South Africa…the time spent with you guys was the most amazing experience.”