A Visitor

                                       

I should mention that the Managing Director of the IMF (and front-runner in French polls in advance of next year’s presidential election), Dominique Strauss-Kahn, came to visit GRS in Soweto this past week.  My dad worked at the IMF for many years and even worked on South Africa for a few of them, so it was cool to meet someone who had worked with him way back when and to just generally have a good sense of who all these people were and what they do.  Other than that, there wasn’t much to report from it, so I’ll let the main Grassroot Soccer blog do the talking:

IMF Managing Director Calls GRS ‘Inspirational’

Dominique Strauss-Kahn, Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund, made time during a whirlwind trip to South Africa to visit  Grassroot Soccer in Soweto yesterday.  In between meetings with the Minister of Finance, business leaders, and students at the Witwatersrand University to discuss the challenges facing the South African economy, Mr. Strauss-Kahn was received at the George Ndlovu Stadium by Soweto Site Coordinator Gregory Laing, where 7th graders from Paul Mosaka Primary School were playing Risk Field.  After listening to the children discussing risks that can lead to HIV, Mr. Strauss-Kahn watched on as girls and boys played five-a-side soccer, and even got a chance to kick a soccer ball around himself!  (“I was a rugby player,” he conceded.)

Visibly moved by the experience, he called Grassroot Soccer an “inspirational group” and wrote later, “As I watched those children play, I was filled with emotion—and inspiration.  Yes, South Africa is going to meet its challenges.

So far, we’ve gotten some really cool press out of the whole thing:

Here’s DSK’s post from the imfDirect blog, which featured in many places including the front page of the Huffington Post for a few days.  This, this, and this are three YouTube clips from the event.  And this is a series of pictures in the Wall Street Journal from his trip to South Africa.  We were definitely mentioned in the Sowetan as well, but all I can find is this article that has a picture of Greg but no mention of GRS.