Grassroot Soccer, an NGO, uses the power
of Soccer to educate the communities to
stop the spread of HIV.
Grassroot Soccer (GRS) is an international public health NGO headquartered in Cape Town, South Africa that uses the power of soccer to educate, inspire, and mobilize communities to stop the spread of HIV.
Problem
GRS needed a way to send SMS to its participants – secondary school students in South African townships – in a quick, easy, reliable manner.
Grassroot Soccer needed to find out:
- Customized Salesforce database to house its program and data, including contact information of its participants.
- An application to send SMS that could integrate with this existing platform.
- Email was not a very effective option because the internet is not easily accessible to everybody, anytime.
Solution
GRS used SMS Magic to send messages to participants of its HIV-prevention program in South Africa.
SMS Magic seamlessly integrated with GRS’ existing platform. Now they can easily ensure that the correct SMS get sent to the correct participants at the right time, and can even send personalized messages to boys and girls. Participants of the GRS Generation Skillz Intervention will receive biweekly SMS for an entire year. The initial results have been very encouraging, as the feedback from the participants has been overwhelmingly positive.
With research partners WRHI and LSHTM, GRS is running a three-year Randomized Controlled Trial (RCT) to evaluate the effectiveness of its Generation Skillz Intervention on grade 9 participants’ HIV-related knowledge, attitudes, and behavior. Half of the study’s participants will receive SMS via SMS Magic, to assess the impact of the messages on health outcomes.
Here is how GRS used SMS-Magic messaging platform to reach people:
- To ensure that the right message is sent to the right recipients at the right time
- Messaging is a popular medium among the youth and receiving HIV-related information directly to their mobile phones gave them a personal touch and made a difference in the graduates’ sustained HIV knowledge, behavior, and attitudes
- Continue the conversation even after they have graduated from the GRS program, sharing the knowledge that they have gained with their friends and family
- Study’s participants will receive SMS to assess the impact of the messages sent on health outcomes
We have been using the system for
about a week now and we are ecstatic about the results. SMS-Magic is assisting us to engage parties that were previously difficult to reach, and it is doing so in an affordable manner.
– Team Grassroot Soccer
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