Survivor Winner Ethan Zohn

Launches HIV/AIDS Prevention Initiative

By Susie Davidson

CORRESPONDENT

On Martin Luther King Jr. Day, CBS Show “Survivor Africa” winner Ethan Zohn returned to his home congregation, Temple Emunah of Lexington, to talk about his experiences on the show, Dr. King’s lessons, and his new venture, which seeks to combat the spread of HIV/AIDS in Africa.

Zohn, who contributed the $1 million proceeds from the show, which was filmed in the Shaba National Reserve in Kenya, to his social causes, took King’s precept, “the time is always right to do what is right” to heart. A professional soccer player, Zohn has helped to institute Grassroots Soccer, a campaign which aims to use professional soccer players in Africa to educate Zimbabwe youth on the prevention of this modern-day international health crisis.

“Temple Emunah does a ‘social action Shabbat’ every year for Martin Luther King Day,” Zohn, 29, explained. “They invite someone to come speak about their work in the community or a community.” This year, it was this noble celebrity, who played in the National Maccabia Games in Israel in 1997 and was bar mitzvahed at the conservative shul. When he got the check for the Survivor victory, he thought, “What good is this if I don’t share?”

Zohn, who serves as Vice Chairman of Grassroots Soccer, graduated from Vassar College before beginning a five-year pro soccer career which included playing for the Zimbabwe-based Highlanders FC during their 200-2001 championship season. Since his Survivor win, he has worked with various non-profits concerned with educating youth through sports. His online journal was featured on the Phillips Electronics/ US Soccer website during the 2002 FIFA World Cup.

The Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta has forecast that by 2010, over 35 percent of all Zimbabwe children are expected to be AIDS orphans.

Grassroot Soccer trains each team’s twenty players to be health educators, with specially designed curricula, within their communities, to inspire African youth to alter behaviors which might perpetuate the spread of the disease. The pilot, seven-month study commences this month in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe; educators will meet twice weekly, for two-week sessions, with children at varied local schools. It is hoped that the project will expand throughout sub-Saharan Africa in 2004 and 2005.

Instrumental in the group is CEO Thomas S. Clark, a Scotland native and pediatric resident at the University of New Mexico, who lived in Zimbabwe at age 14, where his father coached the Highlanders FC soccer team. Board Chairman William H. Wiese, M.D., Interim Director of the Institute for Public Health at the University of New Mexico, has broad experience in high-level public health posts and is a graduate of Yale University, Harvard Medical School and the Harvard School of Public Health. Secretary and Treasurer Jason Hix, a former pro soccer player for the New Mexico Chiles and national champion Albuquerque Geckos, is an accountant at Reynold, Hix and Co. in Albuquerque, and has vast experience with non-profits and business accounting.

Other key players in the group include Andrew Shue, a Highlanders FC vet and actor, who starred on the television show Melrose Place and appeared in films such as Francis Ford Coppola's The Rainmaker. His non-profit organization, Do Something, works in 20,000 US schools, training millions of students to become active in their communities. Daniel Taylor, J.D., a graduate of Harvard Law School, former Chief Legal Council to Governor of Massachusetts Michael S. Dukakis and current partner at Hill & Barlow in Boston, provides counsel on legal and business matters.

Rounding out the core crew is Walter Bortz, M.D., a Clinical Associate Professor of Medicine at Stanford University and expert in the field of educational medicine who, at 72 years of age, is still running marathons, and Art Kaufman, M.D., Chair of the Department of Family and Community Medicine at the University of New Mexico and Secretary General of The Network: Community Partnership for Health through Innovative Education, Service and Research, who also serves as Director of the World Health Organization Collaborating Center for the Dissemination of Community-Oriented Problem-based Education.

“The future is looking good,” Zohn projected. “But the most difficult part is getting money. We need to try to raise money, get more grants, etc.” The group needs to secure funding for the next two years as it seeks to expand into other countries.

“But,” he said, “the future involes using this model to expand all through Africa. This is a very good model because you can take it anywhere with HIV and soccer – into Africa, South America, Asia.” In addition, he aims to launch an exchange program with college student soccer players. “They will be able to travel to a site, teach the AIDS/HIV curriculum to the pro soccer players and help facilitate them when they go into the classrooms.
“But that’s in the future,” said the far-reaching altruist.

For more information, or to have Zohn speak at your synagogue, contact him through his website at Grassrootssoccer.org.