DALLAS, TEXAS -- During the first
seven or eight seasons of the pioneering CBS reality series “Survivor”, I was
an avid watcher of the show, as I eagerly awaited the next installment every
Thursday night to find out how the castaways fared in their exotic locale, as
they tried to obtain immunity, not get voted out of their tribe, and win the
title of “Sole Survivor” and get $1 million for their troubles.
Ethan Zohn, the
former professional soccer player who won that title in the show’s third season
“Survivor: Africa” survived the harsh, primitive conditions in Kenya, and yet
never received one vote against him.
“The real challenge
of ‘Survivor’ was what I would do when I suddenly won the million dollars. I
wanted to be the type of person who used his celebrity in order to make a
difference to others,” said Zohn, who spoke at the annual International
Convention of the B’nai Brith Youth Organization (BBYO) last week in Dallas,
Texas (that's me above, pictured with Ethan in between sessions).
During the two
one-hour sessions he conducted, Zohn entertained the audience of teens and
adult staff with stories of his time as a contestant on “Survivor: Africa”, in
which he admitted he wasn’t prepared for the loneliness and isolation of the
desert of southeastern Africa, and was guided by two principles that assured
his eventual victory: be selfless in a selfish game and be a member of the
community.
Zohn also spoke
about how he became a survivor of another type: his two successful battles
against cancer, in particular Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, in which he had to endure 22
blasts of radiation treatments, four chemotherapy sessions, a new drug and a
stem cell donation from his brother Lee, which helped to put his cancer in
remission. “As a patient, it’s really hard to articulate what it is to be
sick,” he admitted.
He also spoke about
the charitable organization he founded with the $1 million he won from
“Survivor”. It’s called Grassroots Soccer, and the inspiration came from a
reward challenge he won with his tribe mate and alliance partner Lex, in which
they went to a Kenyan village and Zohn ended up playing hackey sack with a
group of children who were HIV patients at a local hospital (he ended up giving
his hackey sack, which was his luxury item from the game, to one of the
children).
“That was my ‘do
something moment’, and from there, I decided to start this charity and help
save lives,” he said. Based on that incident and his experience playing pro
soccer in Zimbabwe, where bodies of HIV/AIDS victims are buried all over the
streets, Grassroots Soccer trains pro soccer players from across Africa about
HIV/AIDS, and in turn, through their soccer skills and what they learned from
their training sessions, these players teach HIV/AIDS awareness to children
across the continent, and hold charity soccer tournaments to benefit the cause.
“I was always
taught to do the right thing, which is why I used the money I won on Survivor
to help the disadvantaged in Africa and erase the stigma of HIV there, too,”
said Zohn.
