I’ve now been living in Cape Town for a full two weeks and
it’s has yet to feel like real life. Cape Town is magical. It has everything
from beautiful mountains to hike, gorgeous beaches, botanical gardens, and
soooo many amazing restaurants (not to mention awesome cheap wine). My wallet
is already taking a serious hit. There is so much to do here especially in
comparison to Kimberley. I’m now also living with 6 roommates who are all
interns at headquarters with me. They are an awesome group and I’m incredibly
psyched to be living with them. But all of these awesome things are still
clouded by why I had to move, the closing of the Kimberley site.
We really had the best last week in Kim that you could ask
for. We were incredibly busy with running a SKILLZ Street Holiday camp and also
having an HIV Counseling and Testing soccer tournament the day before we moved.
Each event was successful and we were able to get to say bye to all of the
coaches. While we had to leave and move to Cape Town, the Kim staff is still
hard at work. There are a few grant applications which we have been shortlisted
on and we’re hoping to be funded. They had to move to a smaller office and
suspend all programs, but if new funding comes in they can be up and running by
the next month. I wish I was there to help them during this unstable period,
and I still get a giant pant of guilt whenever I’m enjoying my time in Cape
Town knowing they are trapped in Limbo.
It’s been a weird transition from Programs Intern to a
Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) Intern at HQ. I am used to working on site
and now I’m in an office setting looking at Excel spreadsheets and running
reports on all of the numbers. I never thought I was meant for a desk job and
this is confirming that suspicion. There are some cool parts of this new gig
including me being the intern assigned to help with a randomized control trial
(RCT) study being done with Grassroot Soccer participants. The study has been
running for the past two years and is meant to see if participants who have
gone through our programs are less likely to demonstrate “risky behaviors” than
high school students who have been in our programs. Each year a survey has been
given to these kids asking questions about different life style choices like
their number of sexual partners, if they drink or use drugs etc. This is the
last year that the survey is being given before the data is all looked at. The
tricky part of this study is tracking down the same kids every year. When they first
sign the consent form for the study the kids provide a contact number as well
as their address, so if the team can’t find them in school they can meet up
elsewhere to take the survey. When kids can’t be found in the school the team
‘traces’ them with that info.
I went with the team to shadow them while tracing kids in
Khayelitsha. Khayelitsha is the biggest township in Western Cape and has zero
signs. Trying to find participant’s houses was near impossible. During a full
day we only found 1 kid. This is not a common occurrence, and the team is
usually way more successful so you could see the frustration on the team that
day. All of their hard work is so important in gathering information for
determining whether our programs are having any effect which is rarely done
with organizations similar to GRS.
