Work in Khayelitsha

FFHC (Courtesy of Katie Pelo)

I imagine there are few jobs in the world like being a programs intern at the Football for Hope Center FFHC in Khayelitsha. There are also few, if any, days at the FFHC that are the same as any of those before it. If anyone asks me what a typical day looks like for me, I can't really give them an answer. Even if the other interns ask whether I will be at the center at 2:30 on Tuesday because they were hoping to visit, I can only shrug. I can be on the computer working on an assignment one moment, then I'll be driving coaches to an intervention at a local school (which is without question the best task), then I'll be pulled in to a meeting with GC, our site coordinator, before finding out that Anna and I need to head back to HQ to print a large volume of coaches guides, pre/post tests for Monitoring and Evaluation, or graduation certificates because the printer at the center is not only small, but also unreliable. As you can probably imagine, the biggest thing that I've learned so far about work at the center is to be ready and flexible for ANYTHING. Yes, I certainly have tasks to accomplish, but there is so much going on around the center and in all the townships that I need to be ready to change gears at a moment's notice.

Speaking of tasks, Anna and I are currently focusing on multiple concurrent projects. She has been hard at work writing budgets and recruiting schools for a program called Skillz Street - the GRS program for girls in grades 7,8, and 9 - that starts this week (woohoo!), while I have been working on a variety of smaller projects. In addition to a few writing tasks, I have focused my efforts toward planning one-on-one sessions that Anna and I will be conducting with coaches in two weeks to improve their computer and employability skills for post-GRS life. Coaches can only be part of GRS for two years and they gain so much valuable experience from those years, but they still have an extremely hard road to travel before finding a job. I have had way too much fun with organizing these sessions, and have created a restaurant menu to present at our meetings to make them seem less formal, and therefore more enjoyable. Or in one of the former interns' words, I'll simply be making a fool of myself, which the coaches love to see. Here are a couple of my sample dishes:

Fried Email Setup and Navigation

This is a classic delicacy in South Africa, and yet still many have not tried this fried dish, full of Gmail, Outlook, and many other varieties of email servers.  

CV and Cover Letter Burrito

Our most popular dish, this Mexican Dish includes hefty portions of “Drafting CV’s” as well as “Cover Letters.” We also recommend having this with a side of Linked In.

In addition, I have been racing around the center to register as many coaches for a new fingerprinting pilot project. The goal is to have every FFHC staff, volunteer, or GRS coach fingerprinted so that we can track who comes to and from the center (especially coaches going to/from the local schools) without tracking the attendance on paper. Everyone will simply have to place their finger on a little scanner and the system registers them before automatically sending it to a database online. While the vision is quite cool, I have been given the heavy lifting: the task of recording everyone's prints so we can match those to our list of staff and coaches. It has been a bit stressful (especially when the program decides to shut down with no warning), but it has also given me a chance to get to know almost all of the coaches, who continue to amaze me. They are really a great group.

GRS Coaches at a weekly coaches development session
(Courtesy of Betsy Kaeberle)

Although this last segment is rather disconnected, I'm going to say it anyway. I mentioned printing earlier, and we have found out very quickly that printing will be a very large part of our job description. For instance, we found out last week that we needed to print 1,000 graduation certificates back at HQ. And when you think about printing over 1000 certificates, the task seems tedious and and daunting. Essentially we sit on our computer printing 50 or so at a time (sometimes competing with others who need to print curricula or something) and  get up when the printer jams to remove errant paper. But then as soon as you realize how all these certificate will be given to 1,000 children child in or around Khayelitsha, the task becomes much more enjoyable. And each of those children has the ability and knowledge to "make there move" to prevent themselves from getting HIV as well as educate others in their community about what they have learned. That is the essence of Grassroot Soccer, and I will spend hours battling with printers for the smile of one kid as she smiles and holds her GRS certificate out in front of her.