That was the first Grassroot Soccer program outside Africa, was it not?
Yes. In January 2005, my wife and I took a group of students down to the Dominican to work with a community of Haitian migrant workers called Batey Libertad. We partnered with an organization called Grassroot Soccer, which is involved in HIV/AIDS education. It’s really blossomed since then. We’re scaling up the program so that the Grassroot Soccer HIV/AIDS curriculum becomes an asset to the country. So you have the Dominican government’s support? We’re working with the Presidential Commission Against AIDS, and we have about a half-dozen other NGOs involved. How does the program work? It’s a brilliant curriculum that involves a series of games, role-playing exercises and sporting drills that are used as ice-breakers to introduce what are traditionally very sensitive topics. So it provides a fun, safe environment for the kids to ask tough questions…At first, we charged the University of Vermont (UVM) students with teaching the curriculum. Now youths from Batey Libertad have become traine
