Concerned students send support to Ecuador
Anna Czolpinski
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Sue Milmer photo The members of Opportunitas Aequa (from left to right): Roberto Prieto, Brenden Smith, Gavin Hollet, Ev Peterson, Andrew Brownlee, Andrew Pike, Duncan Penn and Chris Newcombe. (Missing Meaghan Fraser.) |
At the Opportunitas Aequa headquarters, in an otherwise ordinary-looking student residence just off of Hillside Avenue, it’s impossible to enter the garage: it is packed with hundreds of coloured soccer balls, some neatly packed into cardboard boxes, others deflated and awaiting packaging, together with metres upon metres of soccer netting and soccer cleats.
In January 2007, nine UVic students, along with the sporting equipment, will make the journey from Victoria to the Ecuadorian province of Chimborazo, in the Andes.
This group of UVic students is called Opportunitas Aequa (OA), Latin for equal opportunity. Their aim is to raise 1,000 soccer balls and 1,000 soccer cleats for the children of the rural province of Chimborazo, one of the most impoverished provinces in Ecuador.
The 300 pairs of soccer cleats and 600 soccer balls collected so far have come mostly from individual families and professional soccer coaches who have accumulated the equipment.
According to Gavin Hollet, one of OA’s founders and a UVic double major in biochemistry and Hispanic studies, there are 10,000 to 15,000 youth in Victoria who pay approximately $250 per season to play soccer on a recreational basis. This money goes toward referees, uniforms, field maintenance and balls. Many of the local players acquire new equipment every year, leaving a large surplus of used soccer equipment, which can then be donated.
In addition to collecting equipment, the group also plans to build a soccer field.
“Although it will not be Centennial Stadium,” said Hollet, “it will be a levelled ground with goal posts and netting.”
How many fields are built will depend on the amount of sponsorship money the group is able to raise. Every $5,000 increment can be used to build an additional soccer field, said Duncan Penn, a fellow OA founder who has recently completed his bachelor of commerce degree at UVic.
A third portion of the project will involve making a documentary of the endeavour, recording the impact the group has made with the grassroots project and providing a model that others can follow.
The original inspiration behind OA came to Hollet while he was reading General Romeo Dallaire’s memoirs of Rwanda, Shake Hands with the Devil. In his book, Dallaire describes his first encounter with a refugee camp and his shock at the living conditions. Yet, amongst the horrendous images, he described a group of children playing soccer with what looked like a clump of grapevines.
According to Dallaire, this scene represented a small break from a desperate situation.
During their own travels throughout Europe, Asia and Africa, OA members found that wherever they went, they saw poor kids playing soccer. OA member Brenden Smith, currently completing a bachelor of science in biochemistry at UVic, said it is the camaraderie facilitated through sport that he values. Smith said he spent hours on a beach in Morocco playing soccer with a group of local children and their flat soccer ball, which seemed to mean the world to them.
“It’s a simple sport. There is no environment that it can’t be played in,” said OA co-founder and UVic grad Andrew Pike, who has been involved with soccer for 15 years and is currently coaching community soccer as well as high school soccer at Glenlyon Norfolk School, a local private school.
“School is all about yourself,” said Hollet, who, through his eight of years of coaching soccer, has found a way to contribute his energy toward something beyond his own studies.
He explained that, for him, coaching youth community soccer is about trying to get the most out of the youth, not only as soccer players, but also as individuals.
“It’s about encouraging them to push themselves to be the best that they can be and to show them how to learn from their mistakes,” he said. “The goal is to instill in them a greater sense of team that they can use in all aspects of their lives.... If you can create a positive atmosphere within a team, [the players] will learn so much more than just winning a soccer game.”
“We chose sport rather than some other potentially more pressing humanitarian issues because sport is something that we know and do,” explained Chris Newcombe, a member of the OA team. “We have all seen the positive mental and physical outcomes that are a result of sport.... [The project aims] to facilitate [the children of Chimborazo] playing a sport that builds them up mentally and physically.”
Those involved in OA are now taking their first steps toward their chosen professions. They are not yet in a position to lend their skills as trained doctors, lawyers or business managers to those in need, but their drive and energy, together with their conviction about the positive influence that soccer and sport in general can have on young lives, can go a long way toward providing the children of Chimborazo with at least some of the opportunities that the team had as children growing up in Canada.