“Most of the things that I could see around me growing up were drug and alcohol abuse, a lack of access to education, gender-based violence, a lot of inequality, and too much peer pressure — especially among the young people. All of those things made me wonder: what can I do about this?”
Kunda Mwitwa grew up in Zambia’s capital, Lusaka, in a small and densely populated low-income community called Chawama. One day at school as a teenager, she was excited to hear that an organization was coming to visit the students to teach them about HIV and AIDs — through soccer. “At my school, there was no soccer team so I was really excited to have fun,” Mwitwa remembers.
A few years later, Mwitwa became a “SKILLZ Coach” for Grassroot Soccer, an adolescent health organization that leverages the power of soccer to equip young people with the life-saving information, services, and mentorship they need to live healthier lives. SKILLZ Coaches are not traditional football coaches but near-peer mentors whom young people can relate to, and who make learning about difficult health topics fun and engaging.
So why soccer? “Firstly, it’s a sport that is loved globally and watched across the world,” explains Mwitwa. “At the same time, a soccer ball is not so strange to a young person. It can easily be bought cheaply from a shop or made in a community from plastics or sacks.”
Grassroot Soccer is an adolescent health organization that leverages the power of soccer to equip young people with the life-saving information, services, and mentorship they need to live healthier lives.
Grassroot Soccer focuses on older youth because although global mortality rates have declined for adolescents, this decline has been much slower than that for younger children. Additionally, adolescents tend to engage more in risky behaviors, and are less likely to consider consequences of their actions.
As well as incorporating vital information on HIV and AIDs into their curriculum, Grassroot Soccer runs programs on interconnected health issues such as mental health, gender-based violence, and sexual and reproductive health including information on cervical cancer and the HPV vaccine.
Zambia has the third highest burden of cervical cancer in the world, where it kills over 1,900 women each year. In 2022, cervical cancer killed around 350,000 women globally, and it’s estimated that every two minutes, a woman dies from cervical cancer around the world.
Few diseases reflect global inequity as much as cervical cancer. More than 85% of those affected are young undereducated women living in poverty with over 90% of deaths occurring in low- and middle-income countries. In Africa, cervical cancer is the most common cause of cancer — and the second deadliest after breast cancer.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has a target to eliminate cervical cancer in every country in the world by 2030. The global elimination of cancer is possible because around 95% of cervical cancer is caused by the human papillomavirus (HPV), and, the HPV vaccine can prevent more than 90% of HPV-caused cancer from ever forming.
Recognizing the importance of fighting a preventable cancer, the Zambian government has implemented a national HPV testing strategy. It has also signed on to support the WHO’s global cervical cancer elimination goal.
Yet, despite this emphasis on eradicating cervical cancer, uptake of the HPV vaccine among adolescent girls remains low. In 2021, only 31% of eligible Zambian girls had received the two doses of the vaccine necessary for immunization.
The challenge, then, is not one of supply, but of demand, and that’s where Grassroot Soccer comes in. The organization promotes healthy behaviors and health services uptake in the country, answering adolescents’ questions, and dispelling harmful misinformation that can reduce their interest in seeking services and care, including HPV vaccination and cervical screening and treatment. During Grassroot Soccer SKILLZ sessions, the Coaches use the language of soccer, share their own real-life stories, and use activity-based social learning to normalize these traditionally stigmatized SRHR concepts and make them non-threatening.
Mwitwa describes how a SKILLZ session works. “We create a fun and safe learning environment. The use of near-peer mentors makes our model work perfectly because they understand the challenges these people are facing. We do activities in groups on the misconceptions around cervical cancer and info on the HPV vaccine, and Coaches share their personal stories on how they utilized local services to prevent cervical cancer. Then the groups come together and share what they’ve learned and say what they want to be referred to in terms of services.”
Grassroot Soccer
Kunda Mwitwa grew up in Zambia’s capital, Lusaka, in a small and densely populated low-income community called Chawama. She is now a “SKILLZ Coach” for Grassroot Soccer.
Grassroot Soccer
Grassroot Soccer promotes healthy behaviors and health services uptake in the country, answering adolescents’ questions, and dispelling harmful misinformation that can reduce their interest in seeking services and care, including HPV vaccination.
Mwitwa adds, “Participating in the program was a real eye-opener. I had always looked forward to a time when I could be the one to champion information within my community and around the country. Grassroot Soccer was a safe space and an environment where I could receive the mentorship that I needed. I realized I could become an agent of change in my community.”
Since becoming a Coach in 2017, Mwitwa has been one of the Coaches reaching the estimated more than 13 million adolescent girls who have participated in global Grassroot Soccer programs, and has represented the organization at a World Cup side event where she shared the impact of their work in a conversation with David Beckham. Grassroot Soccer has determined that after “SKILLZ” programs, adolescent girls are more likely to seek health services, leave unhealthy relationships, and communicate with their peers around SRHR issues.
The most rewarding part of her role, though, is when the adolescents and young people open up to her “about the different issues that you would think they would never open up to anyone. They can really trust you as a person and you can be a mentor. I still have one-on-one mentorship sessions with some of the adolescents I worked with three years ago,” she adds.
“My dream,” says Mwitwa, “is to have Grassroot Soccer be the go-to organization when we talk about access to information for adolescents and young people as well as creating a platform where our Coaches can grow.”
During Grassroot Soccer SKILLZ sessions, the Coaches use the language of soccer, share their own real-life stories, and use activity-based social learning to normalize these traditionally stigmatized SRHR concepts and make them non-threatening.
Editor’s Note: This article is part of a content series that was made possible with funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.