Providing A Service To The Youth
Charles Dickens once said (2001) “No
one is useless in this world who lightens the burdens of another.” What the
quote by Charles Dickens means to me is that if someone reaches out with an
open hand to help they will never be useless in our world today. Helping others
around you lifts the spirits of the people your trying to help and make them
fell great about themselves later on. PAI or Progression Athletics International
non-profit or organization provides this good deed to the less fortunate
children around the world. They travel around to different countries and as
well as America and teach the young children about the importance of education
and how to develop life skills for their future. PAI help these at risk and
unprivileged children and target the ages of five to eighteen. Through
fundraising from people who support their cause they are able to travel to the
countries with at risk children.
PAI has a positive outlook for our
younger generation. PAI follows a simple but very creative word to remember
what their objective is when helping these at risk children. That word is
Crave, Shane Hanson said (2011) “Create opportunities
for the youth around the world to excel in health, academics and athletics, Remind at-risk children that
we care about them and we want to see them succeed, Allow all
children, no matter what race, gender or economic status the ability to dream
of a brighter future, Volunteers can invest a child’s life
while building relationships that can last a lifetime, Educate the youth on healthy lifestyles, accountability and leadership
so they can teach others.”(Page 1).
Shane Hanson has been traveling around the world since 2006, on his trips he
started noticing that there were, in his own words, “an overwhelming amount of children that were
neglected and abused”(1), and wanted to create an organization that would help
and change the lives of young children. Progression Athletics International are
like doctors and nurses. They help people that need medical attention no matter
what the situation is. PAI does the same sort of thing but help unprivileged
children that are neglected and abused around the world. So they help by traveling to the cities and
countries with children that are in need of help. The children that PAI go and
provide help to are children that usually come from homes, cities and countries
where they are not very fortune to have nice things or nice clothes to put on
everyday. But the main reason that progression athletics international goes to
these kids is because they want to teach the children to develop life skills so
when they get old enough to finally start working and provide for their family
they can be successful in what they do. In order for these children to have a
successful life they still need their education, without it they aren’t going to
be able to go anywhere with their life. This is another service that PAI offers
to these at risk children by teaching them the importance of education and how
they are going to need it no matter where they go with their lives. So trying
to explain to the kids how education is very important is pretty difficult when
they children are too young to understand that when all they want to do is run
around and play with their friends on the playground.
Even though that PAI targets all age groups of
children and teenagers they don’t just target one specific age group because
multiple children that are at risk are usually of all ages, so PAI notices this
and have different ways to help these children because you cant teach a teenager
the same way you do to a young child. PAI have different ways of teaching the
children ways to understand the importance of education and developing life
skills. Knowing that the younger children wont fully understand why education
is important they try their best to get the point across. In doing so PAI brings
sports into play so the younger kids will have fun learning as well as
absorbing important information they tell them. PAI does the same with the
older children such as the teenagers but the teenagers can understand the
information that PAI tells them, so they don’t need to spend as much time
playing sports. By playing the kids favorite sport it gets them more involved
in the learning and teaching of life skills and education because they have a
higher chance of taking in more information when activities are involved. By
helping these children of all ages it benefits the children that are at risk a
lot because they notice that the volunteers of PAI actually care about their
lives and what they are going to do with their future. When taking the time out
to help someone you would be surprised on the affect that it has on the
individual or group. Especially if you are showing that you care about the
individual and show interest in them and what they do.
In order for PAI to travel to all
these different destinations and help the children they need money to get
there. So PAI does a lot of fundraising in their local city in Simi Valley, California.
Progression Athletics International has many different ways that they raise
money for their organization. The simple way they receive money is just an
ordinary donation of either ten dollars, which will help one child. Other
options that will help multiple children are donations of twenty-five dollars,
which will help three children; a donation of fifty dollars will help seven
children. The donation limit goes all the way up to over one thousand dollars,
which will help over two hundred fifty children at once. According to Sandy
Rees from the Foundation Group, an organization that helps non-profit
organizations an idea of how to receive donations, they say that you need to
fist have these things in place first before your organization starts getting
funded, (2012) “the right mind set, passion for the cause, strong leadership,
compelling mission, donor based fundraising”. After the organization has accomplished the
first five procedures they are ready to start fundraising. Sandy Rees writes,
(2012) “ tell your story to donors, ask for a gift (donation), thank the donor
once donation has been received, and build a great relationship with your
donors”. The Foundation Group website provides great information for any
beginning non-profit organization that want to start a cause that will help out
society.
That being said, the money that PAI receive from
donors, none of the money gets used as compensation because PAI are a one
hundred percent volunteer based organization. For each donation someone makes
they receive some little gift from the organization, whether it is a t-shirt or
large sticker of their organizations logo. Another way that PAI receives funds
for their trips is by signing up for a monthly membership. Every month the
people that have memberships to support the PAI organization by donating
twenty-five dollars every month. With the twenty-five dollars that they donate
the children that are sponsoring will receive a little bag full of all sorts of
stuff. In the bag it contains school supplies, a PAI t-shirt, PAI sticker, a
Christmas present when Christmas comes around, blank note cards with stamps so
they can write to their sponsor and communicate with them, and depending on
where they are from a fifteen dollar gift card to Target if they are from
America. With this money PAI is able to help hundreds of children and teach
them the importance of education and life skills.
Reference
Page
Charles Dickens.
(n.d.). BrainyQuote.com. Retrieved November 11, 2014, from BrainyQuote.com Web
site:
Hanson, S.
(2013, January 1). Sponsor A Child. Retrieved November 5, 2014, from http://progressionathletics.org/dontate/sponsor-a-child/
Rees, S.,
& McRay, G. (2012, September 14). Simple steps to raising money for your
Non profit Organization. Retrieved November 5, 2014, from http://www.501c3.org/blog/4-simple-steps-to-raising-all-the-money-your-nonprofit-needs/
Hanson, S.
(2013, January 1). About PAI. Retrieved November 7, 2014, from http://progressionathletics.org/about-pai/
