Uplift Thru Sport

Our goal is to improve the lives of underprivileged children in the Alexandra township of Johannesburg, South Africa. “Alex,” as it’s known, is a vibrant but impoverished township where ~650,000 people live in crowded huts within 2.5 square miles. In pursuit of our goal, we turned to sports as a means of uplifting the lives of the Alex youth community.

In 2019-20, we partnered with the Alex Baseball Club, organized multiple donation drives, collected a wide range of ‘pre-loved’ baseball equipment, packed 10 x 50-lb duffle bags, transported them via South African Airlines, and in December 2019, organized an event in Alexandra where the equipment was presented to a clubhouse full of excited kids.

In 2020-21, we’ve partnered with Linda Twala, who is recognized as the “father of Alex,” to expand our reach to help more boys and girls. Baba Twala has dedicated his life to training Alex’s youth and taking care of Alex’s elderly. Now at the age of 76, one of his primary goals is to teach Alex’s kids how to swim. This is not only for fun, but for survival, since fatal drowning is the 2nd leading cause of accidental death in South Africa.

Together, we’ve established the Alexandra Youth Swim Academy with the following objectives:

Outfit the Academy, and its Sea Lions swim team, with donations of swim equipment;
Provide know-how in the form of learn-to-swim instruction, as well as hands-on involvement in training the trainers; and
Renovate an existing pool in Alex, or depending on the success of our fundraising efforts, build a new one.