Not just soccer!

We train hard every day here at The IMG Soccer Academy at the best facilities in the world. We are fortunate to have the best trainers, the best coaches, and the best technology made available to us.  However, in some places like Zambia, they are less fortunate.  In fact, they have nothing.  Nearly 86% of the entire population of Zambia lives below the poverty line. This means that these people live on less than $1 a day.

IMG Soccer Academy’s U-18 Development Academy Team decided to help a family in Zambia. They raised more than $1,000 for Heifer International, which is a non-profit organization that looks to end hunger and poverty.  The money that the team raised sent a heifer, two goats and a water buffalo to a well-deserving family that is looking to provide a better life for their children.  These animals each produce gallons of life-sustaining milk and offspring that the family can pass on to neighbors in need.  As a result, a milk menagerie will end hunger for a single child, family and village one at a time.

Benjamin Franklin once said, “I saw few die of hunger; of eating, a hundred thousand.”  According to the United Nations World Food Program, every six seconds a child dies because of hunger related issues.  Currently, more than 1.02 billion people do not have enough to eat.  This is more than the population of the United States, Canada, and the European Union. So how could anyone possibly make a difference?

The boys of the IMG Soccer Academy did just that. They realized that if they wanted to see change in the world, then they must be the change.

“My teammates and I have realized that by working together as a unit, that we can be successful on the soccer field.  We took what we learned here at IMG from our coaching staff in terms of hard work, dedication and team work and used those same ideas to win off the field. Our U-18 Academy Team was able to raise $1,400.00 by mailing flyers to our families, friends and people that we have met through our soccer relationships here at IMG and those people, in turn, have opened up their hearts and their wallets to help us, help others.  I am proud of what we have achieved here at IMG both on the field and now off the field with the help of our coaching staff and with the commitment to excellence by my teammates,” said left-back, Atticus DeProspo.