12 Jul Young Men Using Soccer to Create a strong support structure for Men-Apollo Football Club
One of the major challenges that most communities experience is a lack of support structure for men to discuss their life challenges. Mkhulamini chiefdom under Ekukhanyeni Inkhundla in Eswatini was no different from this challenge however they chose to creatively utilize soccer games to create a club that functions beyond soccer and become a support structure for the young men. Apollo FC was founded in 2018. This club has a total membership of 35 young men, 25 players are between the ages of 10-24 years while the remaining 10 players are between the ages of 25-34 years. A total of 46% of the team membership is attributed to school-going young men while the remaining 56% is out-of-school members. During their practice sessions, these young men discuss health-related issues which are mostly under HIV prevention.
Introduction to the LISTEN Approach
Apollo FC was mapped into the LISTEN project in April 2022. Through the project, the community of practice was able to identify the key challenges that the team was faced with. The team’s challenges identified include drug abuse, high rate of youth contracting STIs, poor sanitation, youth unemployment, lack of financial resources to run a proper team and roads in bad conditions in the area. The listen approach assisted Apollo FC to conduct a group segmentation that was done according to their goals and objectives, member’s location, sex, and preferred delivery points were identified. The human-centered design approach assisted the team to place priority into their challenges and identify possible solutions for them. The identified challenge was lack of a proper soccer kit. In trying to address the identified challenge, letters of request for soccer kit have been written to local businesses/organizations. Currently, Apollo FC is working with the national VMMC coordinator (Jhpiego) to promote and mobilize clients for VMMC, and after they have referred and linked 20 clients for VMMC, they will receive a set of soccer kit.
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