Ever since the first day, we knew exactly what we wanted to do. We, (Lauren and Jennie), wanted to do a project to help kids who didn’t have the privilege to play soccer. We decided to collect old and new soccer supplies and give them to the third-world countries. The supplies were received from members of the Pleasanton RAGE Soccer Club, San Ramon Indoor Sports, and also people we know.
We started by contacting Soccer Pro and asking where they donate their supplies because they do this service also. They gave us the number of the guy and we called right away. Now that we had our donation center, we needed to get the supplies. We set up a bin in the Rage offices and started collecting on December 9, 2013, and stopped on January 20, 2014. It was a huge success! Lauren had to go empty the bin every week!
In December, we had a meeting with the owner of San Ramon Sports, asking if we can have a bake sale and have a donation center for a day. He said yes so a few days later, we set up a table in San Ramon Sports. Lauren made cookies, brownies, peppermint bark, pumpkin bread, and brought the table-cover. Jennie brought cookies, brownies, and made signs. We also had our friend, Sydney, help us out by baking cupcakes and she even stayed to help run the bake sale! So many people bought treats from us. A lot of people donated supplies and money too. By the end of the bake sale, we had almost $200 to spend on new supplies.
The next week, we all went to Sports Authority and Target to buy new things that people didn’t donate much of, like socks, shin-guards, shirts, shorts, and accessories. After we finished our whole project, we ended up with 73 cleats, 66 soccer balls, 26 shin-guards, seven bags, 40 pairs of socks, 70 shirts, 29 shorts, five sweatshirts, two sweatpants, and 15 accessories. That’s a total of 333 supplies!
I’m sure we were happy to work this hard and we hope we made many under-privileged kids joyful.
Jennifer Waldo & Lauren Russell
U14 Rage Premier
Rage Leadership Project
