Case Study: Grassroot Soccer achieves scalable SMS-based HIV-prevention outreach and youth engagement with SMS-Magic

Grassroot Soccer - Customer Case Study

Grassroot Soccer (GRS), an international public health NGO headquartered in Cape Town, needed a quick, easy, reliable way to send SMS messages to secondary school students in South African townships. Working from a customized Salesforce.com database that stores participant contact and program data — and with limited web/email access among the target youth — GRS chose SMS-Magic to provide an integrated SMS outreach solution.

SMS-Magic was integrated with GRS’s Salesforce platform to send targeted, timed SMSs (including different messages for boys and girls), delivering biweekly messages to Generation Skillz participants for a year. Early feedback has been overwhelmingly positive, with SMS-Magic helping GRS engage previously hard-to-reach youth affordably; GRS is now running a three-year RCT with WRHI and LSHTM in which half the participants receive SMS-Magic messages to measure impacts on HIV-related knowledge, attitudes, and behavior.

Grassroot Soccer