Leadership, Health & Empowerment: Johnson & Johnson and Girlz Got Skillz

With the 2010 FIFA World Cup scheduled to bring the world’s attention to South Africa – where young women have the highest incidence of HIV in the world –long time partners Johnson & Johnson and Grassroot Soccer recognized an opportunity to harness the energy and team-building skills of soccer to empower a new network of young female HIV educators.

In April 2010, three organizations worked together to launch a six-day soccer summit in Cape Town for girls ages 14 to 19. Grassroot Soccer (GRS), the Academy for Educational Development (AED) and Johnson & Johnson brought together 50 girls from Namibia, South Africa and the United States for Girlz Got Skillz: A Young Women’s Summit on Health, Leadership & Empowerment. The summit used the girls’ love of soccer to open up dialogue about HIV, promote healthy decision-making, and build confidence and self-esteem among participants. Participants were selected based not only on their love of the game, but for their potential for leadership and willingness to teach the lessons they learned during the summit back in their own communities. The summit was the offspring of the larger, ongoing program that J&J, AED and GRS implement in Namibia that reaches 8,000 youth per year.

The week’s events included an intensive, daily indoctrination in the Skillz youth HIV education and prevention curriculum. Normally an eight-week process, Skillz is the cornerstone of GRS’s intervention programming. Example curriculum activities such as Risk Fitness required participants to be quick-witted as a team to weigh the varying degrees of risk of a range of situations, like relationships with older partners. Pressure Limbo and Juggling My Life demonstrated how easily the proverbial ball can be dropped, and an unhealthy decision made, as additional considerations like sex and pregnancy present themselves in life. Fact/Nonsense explored the powerful, persistent myths and misunderstandings surrounding HIV/AIDS that give rise to stigma and discrimination against those who have it, and lead others to make unhealthy decisions that can lead to transmission. The exercise required the girls to assess, on the fly, the veracity of broadly held myths, like transmission through mosquito bites or kissing.  The exercise was brought to a close with a special selection of Coaches' Stories -- personal narratives from the coaches themselves about how they've been impacted by HIV. For the girls, it was a candid glimpse into the lives of their mentors.

A Resiliency Race found the participants journeying through the streets of Cape Town’s Central Business District to collect information on the culture and history of South African women. The race concluded with a luncheon with community leaders at Impumelelo, a publisher of an annual that recognizes top women in business and government. The summit also included a group tour of the community of Khayelitsha, home to the South African delegates and Skillz coaches, and a visit from Johnson & Johnson partner mothers2mothers, who specializes in working with pregnant women and mothers living with HIV. Pro-footballer ambassadors joined the proceedings to conduct leadership workshops providing inspiration and mentorship, as well as their own personal experiences in overcoming adversity. Local employees from Johnson & Johnson hosted a Beauty Night for GGS participants and even put together a women’s football team to face off with GRS staff and coaches.

The unique worldviews and talents of each participant provided an important key to the program’s success. After spending a few days getting to know one another, and sharing new experiences, the Skillz Café  - a powerful roundtable about young women's health and gender issues - took newly formed bonds to the next level. By providing a safe, unbiased forum participants were able to share the challenges and decisions they have faced in their own lives, related to HIV or otherwise.  What arose were highly personal, vivid accounts of challenges faced in their young lives: loss of family members to HIV/AIDS and other illnesses; sexual abuse; and the denial, by family, of equal opportunities for education as their male siblings and relatives. It was a powerful reinforcement of the idea that, despite geographic dissimilarities, the young women were bound by common issues, fears and challenges, and that the support one can receive as a result of being able to relate is indispensable for moving forward.

The summit concluded with a final day of celebration with a soccer tournament and community health fair at the Football for Hope Centre, Grassroot Soccer’s home base in Khayelitsha. The celebration featured a visit from Helen Zille, the Premier of the Western Cape, whose remarks underscored the importance of choice in empowering young women.

Of Of the impact that initiatives like the summit have, Sharon D'Agostino, Vice President Worldwide Corporate Contributions & Community Relations, Johnson & Johnson says, "We've found that giving young people the tools of leadership and healthy decision-making and providing encouragement and hope can make a real difference in addressing the spread of HIV and create the possibility of turning it back. The Grassroot Soccer program offers an effective way to accomplish this."     

• Watch participants and partners share their experiences in Cape Town.

• Experience the Girlz got Skillz program through daily pictures and blogs on Facebook.
• Read how Girlz Got Skillz changed the life of Alina, a 19 year-old participant from Namibia.
• Learn more about the program partners Grassroot Soccer and Academy for Educational Development

About Johnson & Johnson

Through its philanthropy, Johnson & Johnson focuses on making life-changing, long-term differences in human health by targeting the world’s major health-related issues. In its HIV/AIDS philanthropy, the company partners with communities to prevent HIV and to reduce the burden of AIDS among young women and families. Among its efforts, the company supports educational interventions such as athletics, life skills, arts and culture, and peer-to-peer programs that help young people achieve their full potential and avoid risky behaviors that can lead to HIV/AIDS infection. The company supports more than 120 HIV/AIDS philanthropy programs in nearly 50 countries.  Learn more about the Girlz Got Skillz initiative, and others, at: www.jnj.com/aids2010

As part of the M•A•C AIDS Fund (MAF) commitment to raise awareness about HIV and AIDS and strengthen programs that are reaching out and into vulnerable communities that are at high risk of infection, MAF provided a grant to Washington DC’s The Women’s Collective (TWC) to create an interactive, experiential and innovative program “Between Us Girls” (BUG) to target young African American women between the ages of 12 and 25. The cutting edge, female focused BUG program increases knowledge among young women about ways to prevent becoming infected with the HIV virus while empowering them to talk to their partners and peers about safe sex practices, healthy relationships and the importance of knowing your HIV status.


Reaching young women with information and skills in HIV prevention is particularly important in Washington, D.C. because of the high prevalence of HIV and rising rates of STDs, Chlamydia and gonorrhea in the district. Three percent of the Washington, DC population is living with HIV; 2.6% of black women and 6.5% of black men are living with HIV. Although the rate of young people 13-19 living with HIV is fairly low in comparison to other age groups (0.1% compared with the DC average of 3%), the high STD rates indicate to health professionals that youth are engaging in risky behavior that could lead to HIV infections in their future (DC Department of Health, 2009).

In order to reach a large population of young girls and women in various DC communities, BUG partnered with a diverse group of local and community based organizations including the Seed Public Charter School; Maya Angelou Public Charter School; Francis Stevens Middle School; Fort Davis Recreation Center; Metro Teen AIDS (MTA); Children’s Hospital, The Young Women’s Project, Sexual Minority Youth Assistance League (SMYAL), Pediatric AIDS/HIV Care and the See Forever Foundation. During the recent one-year grant cycle, which ended in June 2008, BUG reached 185 girls and young women. Training participants then translated the information, knowledge, and empowerment they gained at the training sessions into culturally relevant and age appropriate service learning projects in their communities, sharing HIV awareness and prevention messages that reached an additional 320 young women. 

Many of the girls who participated in the program were not aware that the behaviors they engaged in put them at risk for HIV and STDs and did not have the skills they needed to apply protective behaviors to their lives. Most of the girls lacked the necessary skills to negotiate safer sex practices with their partners and did not know how to counteract sexual peer pressure and emotional violence in relationships. The feedback from program participants indicates that most participants both increased their knowledge about HIV risk factors and felt increasingly empowered to make positive changes in their lives and relationships to reduce their risk of becoming infected with HIV or other STD’s.

The M•A•C AIDS Fund has awarded another grant to The Women’s Collective to continue implementing this important project that is making a real and important difference in the lives of young girls and women in the DC area.

About the Women's Collective (TWC)