When Paul (who we met yesterday) is not busy running in his spare time, he is helping others. He works at the Omaha Talons Academy as a Community Outreach Coordinator. The Omaha Talons is a non-profit organization serving the South Sudanese immigrant and refugee community in the Omaha metro area. Specifically, they provide a positive and safe environment focused on education, healthy food access and nutrition, and sports. They utilize basketball as a vehicle to develop life, leadership and educational skills. Many of the kids who have participated in the Talons program have gone on to succeed in school, obtained college scholarships and returned to work with and serve our younger kids.
With basketball as one of their largest and most attended programs, we learned that it has recently been declining due to lack of proper equipment. They typically work with 200 kids at any given time, but have had to scale down to 100 recently. With the proper equipment, we’d be able to impact many more at-risk youth who were interested in participating in the Talons – increasing their numbers back to 200 and even beyond!
So on Day 312, we packed our car full of basketball equipment, brought it all inside to our table at the restaurant, and hid it until Paul arrived. We got Paul and the Omaha Talons the following: 4 sets of pennies; 2 sets of cones; 4 whistles; 2 coach whiteboards; 6 basketballs; and 2 mesh ball bags.
Paul was ecstatic to see the equipment we were able to get for him! He explained how far it will go when he brings it back to Omaha, being able to help engage over 20 additional kids. “This is a total gamechanger,” Paul exclaimed!
