What People Are Saying About The Ball – Organizations and Companies

Celebrities and Professional Athletes | Players | Parents and Coaches | Organizations and Companies | Animals

 

“Balls are one of our biggest challenges. In our soccer programs in Africa and Asia, sometimes the balls don’t even last a month. In Ethiopia, where we have 50,000 kids in our programs, the fields have rocks and thorn bushes that kill the balls. And when our kids play in the streets, glass, rocks and concrete destroy the balls, and they don’t last at all.”

— Tripp Johnston, Executive Director, Sports-Friends

“I participate in hearing-restoration projects in the developing world every year. In addition to hearing aids, last year we brought soccer balls along to give away, too. The soccer balls were far more exciting to the kids than the hearing aids. This ball would be perfect!”

— Gregory Free, Owner, Center for Better Hearing

 

“Usually, when the lions are given a ball to play with, it pops in the first few minutes, and then they tear it apart. I can’t believe how Triton can keep playing with this. Can you make the ball in much bigger sizes, so that we can give it to the elephants, too?”

— Stephen Van der Spuy, Director, Johannesburg Zoo, South Africa

 

“After Adam Horowitz, a Global Citizen Year Fellow stationed in Brazil, inadvertently popped the neighborhood soccer ball, much to the dismay (unabashed anger) of the community footballers, he was not feeling — let’s say — “well-liked.” He could not exactly afford a new ball, and the old one was beyond repair. Thus the community had to go a few days without soccer . . . no small deal in Brazil.

“But just as all the threats and dirty looks were getting to be too much to bear for poor Adam . . . the One World balls arrived!

“After what I’m sure was many weeks of sitting in customs for no particular reason, these brand new blue beauties arrived in Salvador in an enormous box. “Why an enormous box” you ask? Well, due to the balls’ inability to be deflated, of course! Great news if you’re playing in the broken glass-strewn streets of Salvador’s Cidade Baixa; not so great news if you’re the Program Manager carrying a box of four of them onto a crowded city bus. But EXCELLENT news if you’re the guy that popped the neighborhood ball last week.

“Adam triumphantly delivered the new “indestructa-ball” to his community, expecting street soccer to resume immediately. But the locals weren’t sure what to make of this bright blue orb that the ball-popping gringo claimed was a futebol. The scene was tense. However, once Adam showed them that if you stand on it until it deflates, it will re-inflate itself, the crowd went wild. Everyone was happy, and a rousing game of Stand-on-the-ball-and-watch-it-reinflate-itself broke out, and didn’t end until well after dark. Not exactly soccer, but just as fun.

“Adam was the neighborhood hero! (Well, at least nobody beat him up.)”

— Molly Sterns , Program Associate, Global Citizen Year