Delivering indestructible soccer balls to children in Vietnam

By Rotary International

Members of Interact deliver the durable soccer balls in Vietnam.

By Sallyann Price, Rotary staff

At the Rotary International Convention in São Paulo this summer, a group of American high school students kicked a funny-looking soccer ball around the House of Friendship. The Interact club members from high schools in the Bay Area of California, USA, were raising money to send a volunteer team to Vietnam to give away 2,400 of these balls.

On assignment for The Rotarian, I traveled to Vietnam in July with a team of Interactors and Rotary members. The balls, produced by One World Play Project, a nonprofit based in Berkeley, California, are made of an unusual foam blend that kicks and bounces like a soccer ball but won’t puncture, deflate, or otherwise fall apart, an important consideration in the poor communities where children are least likely to have access to safe athletic equipment. In Vietnam, as in many other countries where One World Play Project partners with local agencies to distribute balls, kids will kick around whatever they can find — sometimes rocks, or bundles of banana leaves.

Over two weeks, we traveled from the northern capital city of Hanoi, through the mountains of the …read more

Source:: Rotary International Blog