I was looking over my previous blogs and I realized I have done a good job of providing you snapshots of my day-to-day but I still haven't really explained what it is that I am doing. So here you have it - what it means to be a Programming and Monitoring & Evaluation Intern for Grassroot Soccer.
By now I'm hoping that most of you know what Grassroot Soccer does; it is a non-profit organization that uses soccer as a way to help deliver a fun and engaging HIV-centered curriculum to school children. At each Grassroot Soccer location (each city where Grassroot Soccer has an office) there are Site Managers and Staff members who handle all of the administrative and organizational aspects of Grassroot Soccer. Each site also has 20 - 40 coaches (GRS Kimberley has about 40 coaches) who are all members of the local communities that go in to schools and work with program participants to deliver the GRS Skillz curriculum. And last but not least, there are interns - like me! And as an intern I do whatever I can, whenever I can, to help our school programs run smoothly and to ensure that all of the administrative and organizational tasks associated with running a non-profit are completed.
One of my biggest responsibilities is Skillz Street (the all-girls program that I know I've spoken about before). What is exciting about this job is that Skillz Street is a brand new program in Kimberley! In three weeks we will be finishing up the first ever Skillz Street camps in Kimberley. I love Skillz Street. I think it is a great program with a truly admirable purpose and the biggest challenge that I am facing right now is helping to make this program all that it can be. It's going to be a daunting task, but I've got some ideas up my sleeve that I think will really help energize the program. And I promise everyone, you will be hearing much more about Skillz Street.
My other big responsibility is managing finances. Prepare yourself for this, but I am (more or less) in complete control of the money that comes in and out of GRS Kimberley. Whenever GRS needs to do something money related, I am the person that does it. This means that whenever GRS needs to buy something for a program, put petrol in the cars, withdraw money, pay bills, the person doing that stuff will be me. I am also responsible for completing the massive beast of a report that gets sent to Cape Town each month. In this report I have to code all of our expense in order to determine what money we are using to pay for that expense. We have to do this because our funders have set out very strict guidelines detailing where there money can be spent. For example, one of our funders, the Elton John Foundation, only funds programs that actually test participants for HIV. Right now in Kimberley the only program we have that tests participants is Skillz Street. So whenever I buy something for Skillz Street, GRS uses Elton John Foundation Money (affectionately referred to as EJF).
Another of my tasks that falls under the broad category of "finances" is giving out coaches transport. All coaches get paid a stipend for every intervention that they run and GRS also gives coaches transport money so that they can get to and from the schools that they are working it (note: most of the coaches do not own cars so they rely on taxis to go everywhere). Giving out transport is a tricky matter because coaches have a different schedule each week. Every Thursday I work with the four head coaches (each head coach is responsible for a group of coaches) to calculate how much transport money each coach needs for the coming week. Then on Fridays I go to the bank, withdraw money and spend a good part of my morning dividing the money so that it can be given to coaches.
I am also in charge of a lot of stuff that goes on at the office. One thing I do is manage inventory. Whenever we have a Skillz Graduation or Skillz Street, we give the kids snacks and lollipops (side note: the lollipops over here are so much better than the lollipops in the states!) and I am the one in charge of making sure we have enough stuff each week. Nike also has given us free gear that we give to coaches an participants. We just got a huge shipment of stuff that I have the pleasure of counting, sorting and then distributing.
My final big task here is helping out with Monitoring and Evaluation. GRS has two ways of tracking its success/ progress; the first is counting the number of kids that "graduate" from our curriculums, and the second is via Pre- and Post-Test results. In Kimberley, GRS wants to graduate a little over 8,000 participants by the end of the year. Coaches take attendance at every intervention that they run and a participant must attend 7/10 practices in order to be considered a "graduate." Coaches take attendance by hand and it is my job to enter the names, ages, schools and attendance records for all participants into an Excel file (called the GRS Scorecard) that gets sent to Cape Town. It's a tedious job, but I don't mind doing it because I think it is crucial for us to know how many kids we have reached.
I also help keep track of and analyze the Pre- and Post-Test results. For 10% of our interventions, the coaches will give out a Pre-Test on the first day. This test has ten statements questions about HIV and participants are asked whether they "Agree", "Disagree" or "Don't Know" with the statement. For example, one statement is, "I have spoken about HIV with my parents in the past 2 months.” All of the Pre-Test Answers will be recorded (by yours truly). Then at the end of the intervention, participants will be given the same test and once again these answers will be recorded. I will then track if/ how answers changed and whether or not they changed favorably (whether or not participants put the answer that GRS strives to teach). I'm excited to be helping out with this analysis because this is the best tool that we have to actually measure whether or not the GRS curriculum is effective. I have already realized there are ways we can improve our Pre- and Post- Exams (for example, we could translate them into the local languages – right now they are all in English) and hopefully I’ll be able to make a few small changes that end up making a big difference.
All in all, I have more than enough to keep me busy each day. But I like being busy and I finally feel like I have learned "the ropes" and I can start doing my tasks efficiently and effectively. Thanks for reading that monster of a post and stay tuned - I already have an idea of what I want to write about next and I promise it will be more exciting than this!
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