“Play” it Forward
December 2018
October 2018
CHANGE Adventure Camp and Healthy Steps For CHANGE
CHANGE stands for Canadian Health Advanced by Nutrition and Graded Exercise. The goal of the CHANGE Adventure Camp is to provide nutrition and physical activity resources for all Edmonton families while connecting with nature. Our programming includes field trips, community programs at schools, and family and summer camp activities. Our focus has been low income families in across Edmonton and Parkland County. ( www.campchange.ca).
In downtown Edmonton, at the John A McDougall School, we introduced a camp to reinforce the lessons of nutrition, physical activity and personal well-being taught at school. Camps have expanded to Edmonton Catholic School, Spruce Grove and the U of A Botanical Gardens. At the camp, children participate in a range of activities including cooking classes, obstacle course, kids yoga, geo-caching, gardening and learning about the nature.
As part of this project, we are holding the 3rd Annual Healthy Steps for CHANGE (www.campchange.ca/#stairs), where we are challenging the City of Edmonton to do 1 million stairs. The main event will be held at Whitemud Park/Grandview Stairs (near Fox Drive) but any set of stairs may be used. After which you can log the number of stairs you climbed online at www.campchange.ca!
April 2018
At the end of March, a group of Nursing Students from the University of Alberta initiated a Community Engagement Project called “FEET ON THE STREET” March for Socks drive in support of our vulnerable and marginalized homeless population in Edmonton. Edmonton is home to 2200 homeless persons. The students identified that many of the homeless are at high risk for health related complications because they often are wearing wet socks and shoes; especially harmful in our harsh winters. With the help of our SW Sting FC players and their family members and our community at large, the students were able to gather over 200 pairs of NEW or gently used socks to donate to the Jasper Place Wellness Centre.
March 2018
Hope and Football Tryouts Shoe Drive
SWSFC will be collecting used soccer shoes and gear for Hope and Football at this year’s tryouts. Hope and Football is an Edmonton based charitable organization that collects used soccer gear (boots mainly, but socks, shin guards and balls are needed too) for donation to refugees in camps around the world as well as to local players in need.
For their first project, they will be distributing shoes and gear to Rohingya players in camps in and around Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh. The goal is to collect 500 pairs of soccer shoes to be sent over in June. Here is some more information about the project- http://hopeandfootball.org/projects/
So have a look in your closets, basements and garages and bring any clean boots and gear you’d like to donate to tryouts where there will be a Hope and Football collection bin on site.
February 2018
We welcomed Ricardo Casanova to our SWSFC committee in September 2018, he has served as a coach for SWSFC for 2 seasons and comes with a wealth of experience, passion for soccer, and a shared vision moving forward for our club and the soccer community at large. He recently hosted a Free event Soccer for Socks: where guests could donate a pair of soccer socks to Hope & Football or regular socks to the Bissell Centre or YESS. The event also provided an opportunity for the Soccer community, Social groups, elected officials and those from the broader community, to engage in the value Soccer provides today and how we can work together to do better!
October 2017
Thank you to all the players and families who returned their jerseys and special thanks to Corey Luca and his family who graciously offered to sort, organize and deliver our huge inventory to Africa We Care! Congratulations are also in order for Corey, who was honored with SW Sting FC “Volunteer of the Year!” We truly are thankful for his hard work, passion and dedication and we welcome him to his new role as Equipment Manager. Thank you to ALL of our volunteers who help make this club so successful!
For more information on Africa We Care: http://www.africawecare.org
Making a Difference!
We are proud of the sense of community that we have created and our SW Sting family grows worldwide! Our previous jersey kits have been hand delivered with one of our own SW Sting FC parent Randy Roesler to Haiti and distributed to very deserving children who share our passion for soccer! (Son, Ethan Roesler, U12 Boys Rodriguez)
Haitian Children’s Aid Society would like to thank Edmonton’s SW Sting Soccer Club for donating jerseys and shorts to the children of Haiti Children’s Home (Mirebalais, Haiti).
Gifts for Ghana!
In December 2015 we left for Ghana with 4 sets of gently used Sting jerseys and shorts to donate to a local soccer club in need. We were able to connect with a nonprofit organization called ‘Universal Child Care Foundation’. They had organized a charity soccer match featuring eight U15 boys teams in Afife, a small village outside of the capital of Accra in the Volta region. The charity was holding a fundraiser called Education through football.
I imagined we would be attending a small event, instead it was a well organized tournament where the guest of honour was Emmanuel Adebayor, former Arsenal and Tottenham and national Togolese soccer star, who has recently signed with Crystal Palace. It was quite the sight to see the procession of cars and his entourage march in with Police in charge of crowd control and video and cameras flashing away. We were glad to have him take the attention from us as we were the ‘Special guests from Canada’.
Adebayor gave an inspiring speech on the importance of education. He said that no matter what your dream, whether it is to be an artist, an actor, a singer or a footballer, the most important thing is education. “As a footballer, there are contracts, and you have to be able to read the contract and understand it.”
The charity group is hoping to make ‘Education through Football’ an annual event, with perhaps Messi or Ronaldo as the special guest. Those are lofty goals, but who knows, I’m sure those young boys never thought one day Emmanuel Adebayor would be coming to their small village to see them play.
We were so happy to be part of this event and thank SW Sting for the opportunity by allowing us to bring the soccer outfits for donation. On closer examination I noticed that some of the boys did not have shin pads, half the goalies did not have goalie gloves and some did not have studded soccer shoes, which to me means that these types of donations make a difference. Both the charity and the boys greatly appreciated the gifts. Click here for some good pictures from the Universal Child Care website.
Sincerely the Family of,
Jennifer, Emmanuel, Ashley (U14 Mussenden & Cettiga) and Marcus Ocloo (U12 Rodriguez)
If you or someone you know is interested in distributing our old and gently used soccer kits abroad, please contact us for more information.