Soccer Collection For Africa Scores Big

By Etta Sanders
POSTED DEC.4, 2006

After the final kick of the season last month on the muddy ballfields of Battery Park City, some Downtown Soccer League players changed out of their uniforms and tossed them into a box. The next kids who will wear those Bologna, Manchester and Dundee jerseys will be on fields in Africa. The donations of uniforms, shoes and soccer balls are going to a grassroots group called the US-Africa Children’s Fellowship, which sends school supplies, clothing and sports equipment to 35 schools in Zimbabwe. The Fellowship has teamed up with nearly three dozen New York schools for donations. They made the first of two annual shipments a year-and-a-half ago. “These kids really have nothing,” said Mark Grashow, who founded the organization with his wife, Sheri Saltzberg.

“The only ball they may have is made out of paper and tape. Sports equipment is critical.”

The project began when three P.S. 234 parents, Elizabeth (Zabby) Hovey, Julie Matsumoto and Leah Singer went to Don Schuck, head of the Downtown Soccer League, with the idea of donating used uniforms. Coincidentally, another local parent, Cheryl Moch, had approached Schuck about the Fellowship. “It was something everyone wanted to do but we could never find the right organization to work with,” Schuck said. “It all kind of coalesced in three or four days.”

Grashow and Saltzberg started the organization three years ago after a trip to Zimbabwe. They visited local schools and were struck by the poverty. Twenty percent of the children were orphans. Many had only one set of clothing, which they had to keep clean for school.

“Kids in Africa really can’t play sports because they don’t have the clothes,” Grashow said. “Now they can play.”

Last month, Hovey and others carted dirty uniforms to washing machines in a nearby building. Other volunteers hosed off mud-caked shoes or took batches of dirty uniforms home and cleaned them. Many of the kids were happy to give. “I know the people in Africa can’t afford a lot of clothes and stuff. I feel kind of good,” said Miles Koerner.

Others needed some coaxing. One 8-year-old, playing his first season, wanted to keep his Juventus jersey, but happily donated his shoes. 

By the end of the weekend the boxes were filled. Saltzberg said when she saw the first few bags of uniforms at the field, she had expected more.

“Then they opened the store room,” she said, “and all we could do was laugh. There were just bags and bags of balls and uniforms and shoes.”

Uniforms were also collected at P.S. 234, P.S./I.S. 89, Claremont Preparatory and the City and Country Day School. More donations may come from the Downtown United Soccer Club.

Matsumoto and her husband helped deliver 212 bags of balls to Grashow and Saltzberg’s Park Slope home. “By the time we were done, their entire living room was filled with soccer balls,” Matsumoto said.

The donated equipment will be stored in a shipping container at Lincoln High School, where Grashow taught for 35 years, and then sent to Africa. There, the couple will meet it to assist with the distribution through a locally based organization.

For many Downtown parents, the donations made perfect sense: it gave kids a lesson in giving and parents a chance to clean out their closets.

Leah Singer said she hopes it will become an annual event.

“All of us try to teach our kids about charity,” she said. “Now the kids can see that these other kids are going to wear their uniforms and benefit. That is huge.”

For more information about the US-Africa Children’s Fellowship, go to www.childrensfellowship.org.