Inspire a Child-Sarswati Peace School Long-term Partnership

This week, we are announcing a series of partnerships with people and organizations from around the world. 

Inspire a Child is a non-profit initiative, which builds and renovates environmentally sustainable soccer fields and classrooms, organizes student-to-student mentorships, and promotes peace education in developing countries. It aims to encourage underprivileged children to excel both in the classroom and on the field by fostering sportsmanship and scholarship while creating a safe and sustainable environment for children in developing and impoverished regions of the world to pursue their dreams. Through partnership and collaboration with local schools and community centers, Inspire a Child seeks to create a peaceful and positive atmosphere for the entire community.

Please support the fundraising campaign to build soccer field and classrooms!

Inspire a Child: Initiative of Olivia Wong

Inspire a Child was designed in response to the surge of trafficked young soccer players in Western Africa following the 2010 World Cup. Boys as young as four with a passion for soccer and in poverty are trafficked by predatory agents who promise contracts and tryouts.  Some families even value soccer as a path to monetary success rather than schooling. Inspire a Child seeks to provide alternative opportunities to play soccer while attending school in order to bridge the gap between sport and scholarship.

Olivia Wong is founder and director of Inspire a Child. She is an undergraduate at University of California Santa Barbara and is currently an exchange student at Keio University in Tokyo, Japan as a Boren National Security Education Program scholar. Olivia serves on the Board of Directors at ReEnvision Your Future, a social-media based network of young individuals, which seeks to inspire, engage, empower, and cultivate the next generation of global change makers. In July of 2011, she was chosen as a 100,000 Strong Grantee to represent the U.S. at the Global Development Youth Summit in Beijing, China, delivered a workshop on the UN Millennium Development Goals, and volunteered in underprivileged schools across northern China and inner Mongolia. Since 2010, she has been working on Inspire a Child, an initiative she founded and is now overseeing the design and construction of a soccer field and classroom in Arupokhari-1, Gorkha, Nepal.