PCV Profile: Torle

Torle in her kobo and seshoeshoe on our swearing in day.

Torle is another PCV who arrived in Lesotho with me back in June of 2014. She is a vibrant and energetic young woman who calls Utah home but has traveled and lived all over including elsewhere in Africa and Alaska. She has an incredible singing and beat boxing talent and definitely qualifies as the coolest basketball player in Peace Corps Lesotho.

Given her affinity and experience with team sports, it is not surprising that Peace Corps placed her with the Leseli Youth Sports Organization in Teyateyaneng or TY. Leseli Youth Sports works  on youth development by encouraging youth to engage in healthy, active lifestyles. Youth participate through football (soccer for the American readers), basketball, and volleyball teams; although predominantly football. When she arrived at site, she found she had a jam packed schedule from the beginning. Torle found herself coaching multiple youth teams and visiting the many local schools in and around TY.

Torle's counterpart teaching life skills in GRS

After we attended the Grassroot Soccer training last November, she augmented those school visits to include the GRS PC Skillz curriculum, teaching teens life skills and HIV Prevention messages using football drills. Currently, she is in secondary schools three days a week. She also coaches basketball, volleyball, and netball. Netball is a women's sport somewhere similar to basketball but with different rules about passing and traveling, there is no recognizable dribbling that basketball players would identify. She also works with the LBA or Lesotho Basketball Association and teaches a Zumba class for women in her village.

Torle has been working incredibly hard with her counterparts to help them complete an impressively large project for their community. After doing Needs Assessments with the many youth in her organization, they decided to build a multipurpose sports court for youth in the Teyateyaneng area. As Teyateyaneng is one of the larger towns in Lesotho, this court has the possibility to be used by thousands of youth.

Preparation for the new sports court begin.

In the interest of capacity building and empowering the youth she is working with, Torle and her counterpart created a really strong Youth Committee. They visited the seven secondary or high schools in TY and requested the school nominate the three most outstanding students with an interest in sports. These twenty-one youth were then interviewed in English before the group was narrowed down to five girls and five boys. The Youth Committee meets every Friday. They have been working on every detail of the project from the beginning.

The Committee co-wrote the project proposal and donation request letters. The teens then visited area business owners to ask for their involvement. They did a phenomenal job, as they have five large construction and building supply owners donating many materials, the labor, and all equipment for construction of their Multi-purpose Sports Court. This left them to continue fundraising only for four materials and meals for their laborers. They are planning and implementing a number of community events to raise funds to feed their volunteer laborers on workdays. And, with Torle, they have written and been approved for a Peace Corps Partnership Program or PCPP grant. Their PCPP grant is currently active with Peace Corps if you are interested in taking a closer look.

Girls doing a drama as part of GRS.

Torle recently also became the Grassroot Soccer Coordinator for Lesotho. As the coordinator, she helps and supports the PCVs in Lesotho who have been through the GRS training and are doing GRS Interventions. She also serves as the conduit between the GRS staff in Cape Town, the Peace Corps staff in Maseru, and the PCVs in country. It a lot to add onto an already busy woman's shoulders, however, with her passion for youth sports and programming.

 

A crew clearing the area where the sports court will be.

Torle's many well trained and incredibly motivated GRS Co-Coaches.

PC Skillz Intervention!

The coaches and certificate earning team members at our graduation.

For most of the last three weeks, my days have centered around studying ways to talk about relationships and HIV in Sesotho and playing with village youth.

 I have been doing a PC Skillz Intervention camp. PC Skillz is a joint venture between Peace Corps and Grassroot Soccer. It uses soccer-based games to teach life skills, positive living, and HIV/AIDS awareness. 

Although practices supposed to last for only an hour, most days I was playing with, talking to, or working with youth for 3-4 hours as practices usually took us between 90-120 minutes and the village kids would start arriving as much as two hours early and stay as long as possible to play with the "indestructible" One World Futbol. Add to that coach's meetings, making supplies, and translating pieces of the program with my brother and my entire universe has only been PC Skillz. 

The PC Skillz curriculum is a pretty fantastic experiential education curriculum. It reminded me of my favorite teaching moments in the US over the last decade.  

Over the eleven practices, we covered important topics like stigma and discrimination, abstinence, how HIV and ARVs affect the body, and how to avoid the riskiest behaviors for contracting HIV: unprotected sex, multiple partners, older partners, and combining sex and alcohol. Most practices we had 30-40 village youth from 9-19 despite having said the program was for 10-15 year old youth. In total, over 50 individuals attended at least one practice with more than half attended at least half of the practices. The Peace Corps Skillz program requires participants to attend at least eight practices to earn a certificate of completion, so only 18 received certificates. The others can come again next time we do the program to earn a coveted certificate. 

The coaching team after graduation:
Abuti Thabo, me, Abuti Ts'epo, and Ausi Mareisi

My co-coaches were absolutely amazing. While I was living, breathing, and sleeping PC Skillz, they were coaching with me a few hours a day and also working 6-9 hours in the fields! Every time they arrived, often just as we were starting practice, they were rushing back from the fields, but they always brought enthusiasm and a willingness to help. Prior to attending the PC Skillz training at the end of November, I worried about bringing my brother to the training as my counterpart. My brother is fantastic, but he is barely nineteen and still in high school. I worried that I was asking too much of him to coach his peers and younger teens in the village when talking about sensitive issues like HIV transmission, voluntary male medical circumcision, and sex. He was absolutely incredible though, both as my Sesotho back up-he seemed to know when to help and when to let me work out what I needed to say-and as a coach in his right. 

The youth were amazing too. Sometimes I wondered how much of the message was getting through between my poorly accented Sesotho and their reticence to speak up during Q&A and discussions. But at our graduation ceremony yesterday, it was obvious they knew their stuff. 

"Coach" Bolokang

For the graduation, in addition to bestowing certificates and taking over 100 photos (no really...the kids love having their picture taken, over and over again!), we ran through one of our earlier practices with some of the participants acting as coaches. When asked by their peers, the participants had every single answer they had hesitated to give over the last few weeks. It was wonderful!  

Coach Thabo telling a "Coach's Story."

I think my favorite thing about this particular intervention is that it really helped me get to know the youth in the village-their names, their personalities, etc. And it helped them get to know me and my personality, seeing me as a friend and mentor instead of just the smiling American who always says hello!