The first REAL week

Sunday of Bliss

To give you a better understanding of my life in Cape Town let me begin by mapping out what Sunday, alone, entailed. I’m sitting here in my living room alongside Tim and Margaret (the alums of the not-so-cool NESCACs Amherst and Middlebury), bruised, battered, and incredibly full after a day filled with a number of activities including: driving along the coast of Cape Town, surfing at Muzienberg beach, walking around the V&A waterfront, cheering on ManU in a hole-in-the-wall bar on Kloof Street, and watching movies with my housemates.

Electrical Plug Mayhem

Cape Town is a city full of things to do and plenty to see, but after a week of getting to know our way around, enjoying some abnormally warm winter weather, and living a lazy life of luxury, real life finally hit. I guess I should start from the beginning of the week…

Monday morning I woke up at 7am, stumbled around the kitchen and made my way through the gardens to work. The seven other interns and I gathered in the conference room to have a finance talk, all pulled out our notebooks, focused our attention and then... SAT. It legitimately took 45 minutes to get our projector to work just because of South Africa's ridiculous electrical plug/power outlet situation.

Pictured above from Left to Right: A plug that will fit into any outlet in Cape Town. To the right the converter that everyone in Cape Town must own in order to plug in the plug (pictured below) that over half of the appliances in Cape Town have…

The number of plugs that one might need to actually get power in Cape Town, South Africa.... TOO MANY. Long ago someone decided that it was necessary to have two different types of electrical plugs, but only one type of outlet... and no one has thought to change it yet. Despite the fact that the little white panel in the wall has three holes to put a three pronged plug into, half of South Africa still produces appliances that are two pronged. Every single person that wants to get power out of anything has to have an adaptor!! What are these people thinking?!

45 minutes later (I'm not kidding...) my attention was completely shot, our entire group had reduced to a giggling mess, and Ron (the finance man at GRS) was just getting started with his powerpoint presentation.

Okay, so that was a really long tirade about electrical plugs, but the major point here is that throughout the course of just one week I have quickly learned that idiotic plugs and outlets are on a very long list of baffling/nonsensical/inefficient happenings in South Africa and sometimes at Grassroot Soccer. Put simply, things do NOT happen quickly here and quite often its difficult to trace the thinking behind action.

What I’m Actually Doing Here

Skip the following section if you're not interested in the nitty gritty of what my job actually entailed THIS week...

What my job description is:

The Global Operations Intern will assist Grassroot Soccer’s Global Operations team with Africa (Kenya, Lesotho, Malawi, Namibia, Tanzania, Zambia, Zimbabwe) Technical Assistance programming, proposal and budget writing, project reporting, grant management, and administration, and will help ensure that we are communicating with and representing donors and partners in a timely and effective manner. The Global Operations Intern will work closely with the Business Development, Programs, Research & Development, and Finance teams in the preparation, execution, administration, and reporting of all grants. This position will report to the Director of Global Operations.

What my job actually entailed this week:

1. Creating an intern newsletter site so that our class can keep to touch and so that we can easily share stories between sites. Hopefully throughout the year we can use these stories to provide our generous donors and partners with a better picture of what Grassroot Soccer is really doing on the ground!

2. Working alongside Julie to develop an organized system of keeping track of grants, timesheets, expense reports, and everything in between. It was through this that both Julie and I began to realize how much GRS has grown in the past few years. So much money has started to come into the organization that we are barely able to keep up with keeping track of it all. Grassroot Soccer is taking off and Jules and I will hopefully help them in this by setting up a system that will allow money to flow smoothly throughout the organization and keep people on track with what they have to do.

3. Getting to know the ins and outs of the organization on every level! I sat in on a number of conference calls about business development, the current status of Grassroot Soccer finances, global programs, Sales Force (Grassroot Soccer's database), and much more. I have a LOT to learn and hopefully next week I'll be spending some time in Khayelitsha to get a better sense of how our programs are being implemented on the ground. I hope to take this knowledge and apply it to my understanding of how our global programs (in a number of other countries throughout Southern Africa) work.

4. ORGANIZING THE STOCK ROOM. Julie and I, who are clearly both organization freaks, have taken on the world's craziest warehouse full of gear from Nike. Grassroot Soccer, again because it grew so quickly!, had a crazy stock room piled with boxes upon boxes of cleats, turfs, RED laces, balls, shorts, etc. etc. that Julie and I have decided to organize and log so that we can come up with a system of how our programs can consistently use all of this great stuff! I’m pretty sure a much bigger project is going to be coming out of this so check back for more information in the future…Below is the stock room that we spent over 7 hours creating:













Needless to say, things have been going differently than I anticipated which is I guess expected at a nonprofit.

Yes, Grassroot Soccer is the COOLEST

Okay, so all of that being said (I feel like I just kind of ripped on my one true love) GRS is a pretty unbelievable organization. Things that prove this:



The future…

Grassroot Soccer is about to TAKE OFF. Every day walking into the office I can feel that GRS is going to be a trendsetter for the ‘Sport for Social Development’ movement. With every new graduate (as of this week 350,000 kids have gone through the Grassroot Soccer curriculum!!!!!… We are aiming for 1 million by 2014!) you can feel the organization picking up steam and gaining more followers.



The people…

Everyone is so, so interesting! One example: Taylor, who is sadly about to head out, went to Stanford, has worked with Grassroot Soccer for 5 years, is training for the Iron Man competition, and is heading to Oxford to get his MBA. I could go on and on, but might just have to create a “get to know Grassroot Soccer” part of my blog to give you the full understanding of the incredible staff I’m working alongside.

The vibe…

Walking up the staircase I get high fives from other employees. In the coffee room Vernon, another staff member, introduced himself and gave me a hug instead of a handshake. Every person has made an effort to know my name and get to know a bit of my story.

The office space…

I promise a picture is soon to come.

Other tidbits from my day-to-day life…

1. My house

I’m living in a great two-story house/apartment that is an easy 10-minute walk from work. I live with 7 other interns (sadly Tim is heading to Mtubatuba soon) and share a room with Margaret. We have spotty Internet, lots of beanbags, a great tanning deck, and no TV, all of which result in hours of talking, getting to know each other, sharing music, and just laughing. It is awesome. Below are some pictures of our upstairs.. They really don't do it justice..

2. My walk home from work

I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves:

3. Biscuit Mill Market

Imagine an open-air market in Brooklyn… on steroids. After a full week of work I took this Saturday to explore the Biscuit Mill Market that runs from 8-4 every Saturday. This place is incredible. Abigail, a hilarious woman born and raised in South Africa, described it to me as “the posh place to be on the weekends where you have to be just a little bit grunge to fit in and that will make you fall in love with everything Cape Town” and boy was she spot on. Beautiful people, international crowd, amazing fashion, and the food…Was unreal. Banana and Nutella crepes, bries galour, local red wines, fresh vegetables, spicy red pestos, falafel stands… You name it, it was at this market.