Ethan Zohn (l), winner of the TV reality show Survivor: Africa, and Kirk Friedrich both played with the professional soccer team Highlanders Football Club in Zimbabwe. Now, they work with Grassroot Soccer.

Ethan Zohn, who grew up in Lexington, MA, may be best known in the U.S. for winning the CBS-TV show Survivor: Africa, but he played soccer for the professional Highlanders Football Club in Zimbabwe before achieving reality-TV show fame.

Zohn was approached by former Highlander Thomas Clark, who had gone onto medical studies at the University of New Mexico after his soccer career. As part of his residency, Clark had developed the idea for Grassroot Soccer, which sends professional soccer players into African communities to talk about HIV/AIDS issues and which also uses the cachet of soccer players to attract funding.

Joining Zohn at HSPH was former Highlander teammate American Kirk Friedrich.

"In Africa, soccer players are the currency," said Zohn, co-founder of Grassroot Soccer. "There are no video games, no Playstations, so kids play soccer."

The group focuses prevention efforts on young people aged 10 to 17 years. One pilot project sends professional soccer players who have been trained in HIV/AIDS education messages to AIDS awareness and prevention clinics in the city of Bulawayo, Zimbabwe. The program reaches more than 200 children each week.

To raise awareness of the suffering in Africa, Grassroot Soccer has developed a program for U.S. kids called the Kick AIDS team challenge, which educates children in America about HIV/AIDS while they fundraise to help their African peers.

The Zimbabwe AIDS Council developed a curriculum, based on information from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, that Grassroot Soccer employs during four, 90-minute sessions with young people. The curriculum does not advocate a single behavior or policy but rather presents the facts and teaches students to think for themselves. After they complete the sessions, graduates are given certificates, and feted, with family and friends, at a program of music and dance. To date, more than 2,500 Zimbabwean youth have received certificates.

Grassroot Soccer is now working with organizations such as World Vision to explore the expansion of the Grassroot Soccer approach to Zambia, Tanzania, Kenya, and South Africa. In addition, through a collaboration with Health Communication Partnerships in Ethiopia, the program is expected to reach more than one million students over the next three years, said Friedrich.

Grassroot Soccer has received grants from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and the group hopes more funding will follow, especially because the World Cup will take place in South Africa in 2010. In anticipation, Grassroot Soccer expects to sign up more athlete trainers and to interest more young people in AIDS awareness.

--PHC