10 June 2014 - NBA player Tyreke Evans of the New Orleans Pelican will lead a Goodwill Mission to the Philippines to help the Yolanda survivors.
The 10-day visit to the Philippines will begin on 22 August 2014, and Mr. Evans will be with 17 high school students and a group of teachers from New Orleans Public Schools, who were all survivors of Hurricane Katrina that devastated New Orleans in 2005. Ms. Jena Ferguson, creator of Operations Hoops Care, is coordinating the visit and will also be part of the group.
The Goodwill Mission aims to create awareness about the on-going rehabilitation efforts in the typhoon-devastated communities in the Philippines and raise funds to build houses and schools for the Yolanda survivors. While in the Philippines, the NBA player will conduct basketball camps for the young people.
The New Orleans students, on the other hand, will express their solidarity with their counterparts in the Philippines and share a message of hope and their experience in recovering from the impact of Hurricane Katrina.
Operations Hoops Cares and the US Philippine Society jointly organized a press conference last June 3 at the Philippine Embassy in Washington DC to officially announce the Goodwill Mission and its objectives. Mr. Evans, who is recovering from a minor surgery, was represented by his three brothers – Reggie, Eric and Dion. Reggie conveyed Tyreke’s readiness to go to the Philippines.
Representatives of Washington DC-based Industrial Bank, New Orleans-based ACE Mentor Program and Pennsylvania-based GoldMed Health Card (a Philippine company with US presence), sponsors of the Goodwill Mission, were present at the press conference to explain their involvement in the mission.
Two teachers and seven students of New Orleans Public Schools also came to the press conference. Ambassador John Maisto and Hank Hendrikson of the US-Philippine Society also expressed their support for the mission.
Philippine Deputy Consul General Zaldy Patron attended the press conference to speak about the Build A Shelter Project (BASP), one of the beneficiaries of the Goodwill Mission. BASP is an initiative of the Filipino American community in the US Northeast in partnership with the Philippine Consulate General in New York.
BASP is continuing its fundraising actvities to build permanent shelters in the towns of Hernani, Giporlos and Quinapondan in Eastern Samar and in Tanauan in Leyte. The Gawad Kalinga Community Development Foundation, Inc., a Philippine-based non-government organization, will build the BASP villages in the four identified towns. BASP has already raised about $321,000 as of 2 June 2014.
The Goodwill Mission will also support the Adopt-a-School project of Pinoy Relief, which sponsored a major fundraising concert in Madison Square Garden in New York City last March.
The other sponsors of Goodwill Mission are NBA’s Basketball Without Borders and Knowledge Speaks. END