Tsunami Soccer Relief Weekend

[Shaun Lowther]

We will be having a soccer relief weekend Jan 7/8 here in Calgary. Please read below for details. A similar event in Vancouver/BC would be worthwhile.

Thanks

Shaun L.

Tsunami Disaster – Soccer Relief

I think we’ve all been captivated by the horrific scenes on the TV recently, and feelings of helplessness as we’ve watched replays of the gigantic waves smash down on communities in South Asia, and the devastation created. The graphic images of people wandering the streets bewildered having lost children, wives, relatives and possessions have touched us all. Imagine being in their situation, seemingly hopeless and trying to take stock of what has just hit them. In the short term how can they recover? This disaster seems “eerily” different from other historical tragedies as there were no cultural differentiators with so many nations being affected by what has happened. Looking on numerous websites, there are words of anguish from people world wide scrambling to find out the fate of acquaintances – all this portrays the sense of helplessness and in some ways hopelessness…. The aid agencies have indicated that it is not feasible in the timescales to collect and distribute donated clothing and other household commodities, and that they can be more effective dealing with this on a local level. But if like me you’d like to do something, anything whether large or small the question is what and how? What can we do in our community to try and relieve some of this suffering whether the money goes directly to those hardest hit or whether to the agencies working to provide the support services to minimise the impact of the devastation.
I’m sure many of us have already had the opportunity to donate money but if we haven’t and would like to contribute to the relief funds, what about doing this through our sport. Our indoor soccer season restarts after the winter break on 8th January 2005. What ever level or age group we are associated with then why don’t we make the 8th and 9th January a soccer donation weekend??? By this I don’t expect that we change the CMSA or CUSA schedule but that each player donates a “tooney” ($2) which can be collected by the coach or team official and banked at a chosen local bank account (to be decide by CUSA or CMSA officials). All denoted money can then be forwarded to either the Save the Children fund:
http://www.savethechildren.org/radio...cleID=&NewsID=
or World Vision: http://www.wvi.org/wvi/home.htm or whatever other charity decided who is actively involved.
We’ll all need to volunteer a little more of our time but for something so simple it will make a lot of difference!
If this is acceptable to CUSA and CMSA, then all we need is an announcement on their websites that the 8th and 9th January are official dates to help out if we want to. We will need to let as many coaches know as possible whether contacting them by phone or by directing them to the websites.
Thanks for taking the time to read this and I hope that you will want to do your “small” part to help out. If you are interested let me know by either return email or telephone on 403 2018590.

Mike Sell
U16 Soccer Coach,
South West “Eagles”