The Great Football Giveaway

I don't remember exactly which flight I was on other than it was on Air New Zealand, while flipping through the different shows they had, I came across this video:



Actually, this is only part of the actual clip shown. From what I gathered, this is a project they have been doing for a couple years now. I thought it was pretty cool. Pretty cool that something so little as a soccer ball can bring so much joy to a little kid.

Not sure if it's on this clip, but there is a segment where they visit an orphanage. When they visit the orphanage, the guy has second thoughts about this project. He mentions how heartbreaking it is to walk into the orphanage with a soccer ball when they are in need of so much more.

Overall, most of the villages they visit, you can see the excitement the kids have when given a ball to play with. This made me think of Tonga. Made me wonder what I could do to give back.

This project really stuck in my mind as we drove through Vaini and I could view the little kids running through the village during their lunch break. Majority of them running over to a house that was giving out food for those that came over to a viewing. Lots of the kids barefoot like the ones in this video clip. As we drove around the village, I noticed the condition of the school. Run down, old. The bathrooms looked disgusting. (I wish I would've taken pictures.) As we drove around, I thought back to the worse bathroom I ever visited in the U.S. and it was nothing like what I saw.

The project along with the visit to Tonga has made me want to do something to give back to my birth town Vaini. Who knows, maybe in the long run, I could do something for the poor villages in Tonga. Any ideas?