Sport and Play Projects: Teaching Life Skills to Vulnerable Children and Youth
Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Mozambique
|
Sport and Play Projects: Teaching Life Skills to Vulnerable Children and Youth
Implementing Partner: CARE USA (THROUGH THE CORE INITIATIVE)
Funding Period: August 2003- March 2012
Amount: $8,245,891
Purpose: Introduce in communities the use of sports
and play as developmental tools for children
and youth, provide health education, and
encourage children and youth to adopt a
healthy lifestyle.
Accomplishments (since project inception)
- Trained 300 coaches and reached approximately
20,000 youth over the life of the
project
- Created an extensive training curriculum specifically
addressing youth and HIV/AIDS
- Provided mentoring and capacity-building
support by focusing on organizational development
and program management to two
subgrantees: Right to Play and Grassroot
Soccer (the former assuming greater responsibility
for conducting its own activities, such as
the project design workshop in Ghana and a
midterm evaluation)
- Produced a best practices curriculum for
youth to address trauma and resiliency
through sport-based programs (under the
Grassroot Soccer subgrant)
- Provided resiliency activities to more than
600 students through Grassroot Soccer
|
 The CORE Initiative has been a five-year,
global, USAID-funded program that
addressed the causes and consequences
of HIV/AIDS by strengthening the capacity of
community and faith-based organizations working
to prevent HIV/AIDS, reduce stigma, and provide
care and support for those living with HIV or AIDS,
including orphans and other vulnerable children.
Partnering with CARE USA, which led the initiative,
were the International Center for Research on
Women; the International HIV/AIDS Alliance;
The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public
Health, Center for Communication Programs; and
the World Council of Churches.
Since 2004, USAID’s Displaced Children and
Orphans Fund has supported CORE Initiative’s
capacity-building work with the subgrantees Right
to Play (RTP) and Grassroot Soccer. In 2007,
CORE focused on organizational development and
program management issues. Both organizations
work internationally, using specially designed
sport and play activities as means to connect
with vulnerable children and communities and
to introduce skills and practices to improve
health and prevent disease.
Another USAID-funded program, Teaching
Life Skills to Vulnerable Children and
Youth, has worked with vulnerable children
and youth—particularly orphans and former
child combatants—as well as with coaches,
teachers, and other adult community mentors
in Mozambique, Rwanda, and Sierra Leone.
RTP’s SportHealth program in Kigali,
Rwanda, has used the power of sport to bring
people together to teach children and youth, from
5 to 19 years of age, the importance of vaccinations,
physical fitness, and prevention of HIV/
AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria. In Sierra Leone,
RTP’s SportWorks Community-Based Reintegration
Project has taught life skills to former child combatants
and vulnerable children through specially
designed sport and play activities. The program also
trains and involves community members as coaches
and leaders. In Mozambique, the RTP project
provides adult volunteers and younger program
participants with information on HIV/AIDS.
Grassroot Soccer implements resiliency projects
for orphans and other vulnerable children in South
Africa and Zambia. It operates on the premise that
children learn best from people they respect. The
organization therefore taps professional soccer players
and other role models to work with the program.
Grassroot Soccer also uses youth from the program as
peer educators, and it encourages the involvement of
entire communities to reinforce the healthy messages
that children receive through the program.
Back to Top ^
|
