soccer ball drive

soccer, a photo by belovedshoshanna on Flickr.

What reminds you of childhood? For me... it is undoubtedly the hours upon hours upon hours that I spent on the road beside our corner lot house playing basketball. Shooting hoops with the neighbors, my step-dad and brothers, my mom and grandma even played with us once... shooting hoops when I was happy, when I was sad, when I was frustrated. Practicing and practicing so I could make the high school basketball team. Shooting away the anxiety, shooting through the excitement as I waited for teenage life changes, shooting to raise money... I always had a basketball in my arms. I would work on shooting 3's for hours at a time. Then dribbling drills and layups and playing horse and whipping everyone in the neighborhood :P. Basketball was an absolute joy of my childhood. 


Most of us have those things from our childhood that really just remind us of being children. For many Ghanaian children, soccer/football, is that link to childhood. That thing they want to be awesome at and practice hard to learn. In so many of the videos and first hand accounts of child trafficking... I have heard child after child say "and when we can sneak it in, we play football". It is a passion, it is a connection to an otherwise childhoodless life. A soccer ball is an extremely coveted possession for these children. AND it is something that we can get for next to nothing and give to children in Ghana. 


So for the next month... until my oldest son starts kindergarten... I will be collected soccer balls to take with us to Ghana to give to children we meet there. You can donate money to my personal fund and denote that you are "sponsoring a soccer ball (or several)" or you can get with me and get my address and ship them right to me. The more we get, the more we can give. So with that being said, I am not opposed to deflating 50 or 100 soccer balls to ship ahead of us to Kete-Krachi so that we can inflate them all and distribute them to amazing, beautiful children.