This summer, as the world’s attention was focused on the soccer World Cup in South Africa, a group of Georgetown student athletes in Johannesburg participated in a powerful and inspiring event that took place far from the din of vuvuzelas.
They were taking part in Team Up, a project in which 10 D.C. middle school students were brought to South Africa as part of an exchange program to raise HIV/AIDS awareness and establishing links between two communities hit hard by the disease.
The Georgetown students were part of Grassroot Hoyas, a program created in January 2009 by Tyler Spencer (SCS ’08) that uses student athletes to inform D.C. schoolchildren about HIV/AIDS and promote tolerance for HIV/AIDS patients. Using sports and games as a means for frank and honest discussion of the disease, Grassroot Hoyas aims to educate one of the most at-risk communities in the country.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, one out of every 20 adults in D.C. is HIV-positive, the highest rate in the nation. In Wards 7 and 8, the number is closer to one in eight, on par with parts of Sub-Saharan Africa. Even more troubling is the fact that the number of new HIV-positive youths tripled between 2000 and 2005 compared to the previous five years.
“I started Grassroots because I was shocked by the rates of HIV in D.C.,” Spencer, who is now studying at Oxford University on a Rhodes Scholarship, said. “I had worked on a similar program, GrassrootSoccer, in South Africa for several summers, and I believed the model used there could work in D.C.”
Based on the model of GrassrootSoccer, the Grassroot Hoyas program is designed both to educate D.C. children about HIV and to give them an opportunity to discuss and work through the pain of having loved ones suffer from the disease.
At the beginning of each eight-week program many children are profoundly misinformed about HIV/AIDS, with most of their knowledge from the disease coming from what they see on television. Many students erroneously believed that HIV-positive people would display some visible sign of illness.
But even more important than correcting their misconceptions about the disease, he said, is getting them to discuss the subject at all.
“They do not talk about AIDS,” current president Deidra Sanders (SFS ’11) said. “None of them know that this is a serious issue in their community and life. Some know but refuse to talk about it. Some of these kids have been affected or are infected with HIV, and their classmates don’t know because they don’t like talk about it.”
The program is centered around sports-based games, which are intended to lighten the mood and make it easier for students to talk about HIV/AIDS. Each game contains a key message, dealing with issues such as peer pressure, stigma, discrimination, drugs, abstinence, and safe sex.
“We never start with HIV/AIDS. We start with something simple, like soccer, and transform them into games about HIV/AIDS,” Sanders said. “Our goal is that they know all key messages by the end of the game.”
In one game, students were all given tennis balls to hide behind their backs, with a single ball labled “HIV-positive.” Students were then asked to guess which person held the marked ball, helping them realize that it is often impossible to tell who is infected with the virus and who is not.
Sanders claims that this hands-on approach was the reason Grassroots has been so successful. Without the burden of lectures or books, Grassroots coaches can joke, play, and have fun with the students. It’s a unique approach at getting young people to talk about serious issue that can be both polarizing and stigmatizing.
Though mostly light-hearted and fun, Grassroots programs often include profound and heart-wrenching moments.
“By the end of every session, these kids are opening up that their neighbor has died, their sister has died, their aunt is infected now,” Sanders said. “Those moments aren’t as fun or happy, but there’s so much positive energy in those moments. People are so supportive.”
The Grassroot program, though not affiliated with Georgetown’s athletic department, is limited exclusively to student athletes. Spencer, himself a member of the men’s heavyweight crew team during his time at Georgetown, claims this aspect of the program is crucial to its success, saying that children sometimes respect the athletes even more than their teachers.
According to Spencer, many student athletes are interested in doing extracurricular activities other than their sport, but demanding practice and training schedules make it difficult to fit in other time commitments. Grassroots, however, is specifically designed to work around athletes’ busy schedules. Sanders claims it is the only organization on campus that allows them to make a substantial contribution to something other than their team with the limited time they have available.
“In high school, I did a lot of community service, and when I got to Georgetown I didn’t really see how I’d be able to do it,” Sanders said. “When I saw Grassroots I got involved and I was excited because it fit my schedule.”
According to Funding Coordinator Victoria Stulgis (COL ’11), the program was designed as a kind of support team, since athletes are already intimately familiar with team-building.
“The coolest thing about being an athlete is that your team members become like a family to you, and that’s one of the big things we talk about, what a support team can do for you and what a sport can do for you,” Stulgis said.
The athletes who participate in Grassroots benefit not only from the chance to branch out from the sport they play, but also from the lessons they are responsible for giving.
“Something like one percent of student athletes become professionals [in the sport they play in college],” Stulgis said. “So we also see it as providing athletes with the tools they can use after they graduate. They’re given skills to use in the real world, and to realize that they can be advocates for social justice.”
For their part, student athletes have taken enthusiastically to the opportunity to participate in an extracurricular that doesn’t interfere with their team obligations.
“I love my job because [the athletes] are always willing to do more. There are so many people who want to participate,” Sanders said. “That’s one of the reasons why I see this program being so successful, because everyone is so excited about it.”
After it was founded in 2009, the program grew faster than even Spencer expected, forcing him to expand the program beyond what he had originally envisioned. Even with an additional and unexpected increase in the number of programs this semester, there was a demand for more. While just 40 student athletes participated in the program’s inaugural year, this semester there were more than 170 volunteers.
“One of the problems we faced was saying [to schools that had reached out to Grassroots], we can’t put your program in our schedule this semester.” Sanders said. “And its sad, but as we grow, I’m sure we won’t have that problem.”
A major step in the program’s growth came when it was recognized as an official student group by the Center for Social Justice this semester. Despite the fact that it advocates for condom use, Sanders said the University was happy to embrace Grassroots as an official student group.
“There were no problems with our curriculum. We didn’t have to change anything. They’ve been fully supportive,” she said.
The most important change resulting from the CSJ approval was transportation. Before this semester, Grassroots athletes used Metro, cabs, or borrowed cars to travel to their programs, a costly and time-consuming process.
“[CSJ] has been amazing at providing services,” Sanders said. “I can have 15 programs this semester because we have transportation, knowing the students can go back and be on time.”
Besides time and cost efficiency, having a reliable means of transportation meant that Grassroots could reach the areas of D.C. that most needed their efforts. Grassroots now has a combined five programs in Wards 7 and 8.
The need for Grassroots’ efforts in the D.C. community and the unique and effective approach it employs are only two of the reasons why the organization has experienced such incredible growth in such a short time. Stulgis credits Spencer’s initial and continued enthusiasm for the program’s success.
“Tyler has so much energy, and his experience in South Africa were really inspiring,” she said. “He was really effective at communicating his passion to the original athletes.”
This passion spread quickly, and as the original athletes returned from their programs with positive experiences, their teammates caught on. Word of mouth began to play an integral role in spreading the Grassroots message among Georgetown athletes.
Though only two years old, the program has already expanded past Georgetown. Similar groups have started at George Washington and Howard Universities, and plans are in place to set up programs at University of Maryland and American University. Spencer and Grassroot Hoyas oversaw the implementation of the program at other schools, but they are now completely independent.
Now, Grassroots is faced with having to control its growth to ensure the continued quality of the program.
“We are going to slow down a little bit to make sure it’s perfect,” Sanders said.
The plan to perfect the model involves refocusing the program to establish stronger relationships with schools that share Grassroots passion and enthusiasm.
“We had to know that the ones we were expanding to were our good programs, where we know we’ll be effective, and growing not just to be growing,” Stulgis said.
This refocusing ensures that Grassroots’ growth is sustainable, and that the excitement for the program that spurred its initial growth continues. Ultimately, Spencer, Stulgis, and Sanders see Grassroots becoming a national phenomenon, spreading next to cities like Memphis, Los Angeles, and Atlanta, where the HIV/AIDS infection rate is also high. But their vision for the future of the program is even broader.
“I see myself doing this in the future and making it a global initiative, using athletes as role models and being able to reach the kids and telling them how to protect themselves,” Sanders said.
Participants say the program’s success ultimately depends on the fact that, while students are glad to make a difference in HIV/AIDS afflicted communities in D.C., they genuinely enjoy working with the kids.
“I think it’s taken off because when you go, you think it’s such a tragic topic, but when you go, you’re not drawn down, it’s about energy, and playing with the kids, and prevention,” Stuglis said. “And you realize what you’re doing could help prevent the kids from contracting HIV.”
