News

Clash U9, an under-9 lax group in Charlotte, NC, ended the season by purchasing The South African Lacrosse Project keychains for each player. The team also honored their coaches by making a SALP donation in the coaches' names. What a great way to show your coach how much they meant to you—by paying it forward to kids halfway around the world!

On the 7th of May 2011, the Lacrosse Coaches from Timothy House (WWS) went to Waterberg Academy to introduce the SALP. 29 learners in the school participated in the practice, they were reluctant at first, but we played the game and intorduced all the basics to them, they got so much interested in the game and they suggested that they should stop playing other sports, e.g hockey and rugby in their school and play Lacrosse.

Their Sports and Art Teacher suggested that we should come on Saturdays at school to play the game with the learners living in the Hostel and prepare those who are interested for Lacrosse camp in July. The learners have a lot of potential and very keen to learn, only for one day, they learned a lot of skills and they were able to apply them in their mini-games.

To date we will be going to academy every Saturday to practice and organise mini-matches with them and other schools. We are still practicing with other schools and since they were coming to the centre in the past few months, we will be going to their schools. We are targeting 120 learners in all 4 schools (Meetsetshehla Secondary; Mahlasedi Primary; Mokolo Primary & Waterberg Academy) including Timothy House.

The North Colonie Capitals of the Albany NY area are pleased to be able to support the South African Lacrosse program. Since 1992 the NC Cap’s has given all children the chance to learn the game of lacrosse. Helmets, once used as loaners, provided all boys in the area the opportunity to learn the game without being held back by financial concerns. In the same fashion, this donation extends the usefulness of these helmets for a great reason.
Up until the call from the South African Lacrosse Program, these helmets had no home. The NCCapitals were glad to receive the challenge to support the program and extremely happy the old lids have found a good home and will be enjoyed once again.
Volunteerism drives NCCap’s youth program and without the dedication of such individuals as NCCap president Tom Julien, Vice Presidents Steve Hart and Mark Bette, the level of success would never have been realized. Similar to the South African Lacrosse program, it is great to see volunteers making a difference and the NCCap’s are honored to help.

We had an enormously successful fundraising event at Dallax 2011 on March 19th - thanks to Ashley Gersuk and WomensLax.com for allowing us to be a non-profit sponsor for the first-ever women's lacrosse event in Cowboys Stadium! We took t-shirts, keychains and Christmas ornaments to sell and sold out of everything, raising almost $3,000. Seeing our new video on the jumbotron was very exciting, too. Thanks to Matt McJunkin for joining us from Washington, D.C., and Rachel and Molly Mannes, SALP volunteers from Dallas. In this photo, Matt McJunkin, Harrison Hart, Rachel Mannes, Molly Mannes, Kip Hart.

Many thanks to Gerry Hanlon for putting this video together for us, its great! Please send this to anyone interested in supporting the project!

Please check out our 2011 newsletter containing updates and highlights of our activities this year! Click here to view:

2011 Newsletter

We are going to have a very special volunteer meeting for The South African Lacrosse Project on Sunday, January 30th at 4:00. Mary Stephenson will be here from South Africa, and this will be a great chance for everyone who has been to South Africa with us to see her again, and for those of you who have not met her yet to chat with her. Mary is the director of the Waterberg Welfare Society, the organization that we run our summer lacrosse camp through (http://www.waterbergwelfaresociety.org.za/). Let us know if you can make it for an informal meeting and update on our fundraising efforts and this year's camp, followed by dinner at 6:00.

If you have friends who are interested in volunteering, bring them along!

We would like to thank the Shannon Family Foundation for their very generous contribution to The South African Lacrosse Project.

Bruce S. Shannon started the Shannon Family Foundation in 2005. Mr. Shannon lived in Naples, Florida until his death in 2007. He was a successful businessman with a philanthropic side. He started the foundation with the idea of donating money to local charities that may be suffering because of the many disasters that have occurred over the last several years. He felt that these events, combined with the downward trend of the economy, would lead to less money being donated to local causes.

We are honored to be the recipients of the Shannon Family Foundation's generosity!

We have some phenomenal new volunteers in Wales, Wisconsin! Kristen Layo, Allie Behrend, Amy Gelhaar, Quinn Sousa and Katie Brueske have been out promoting SALP, selling t-shirts and keychains, and getting their friends involved. This past Saturday the girls worked the Gobbler tourney in Wales. They made a group on facebook and invited all of their friends to the event. They even took pre-orders for shirts and keychains. They look like they had a great time, and they raised over $1,200. Many thanks Kristen, Allie, Amy, Quinn and Katie (and mom Colleen Brueske!).

We are so grateful to the Biddeford Youth Lacrosse league who sent us 17 girls' lacrosse sticks for the kids in South Africa. Located in Biddeford, Maine (www.biddefordyouthlacrosse.org), their mission is to use lacrosse as a vehicle to develop healthy, happy, confident, and well rounded children in the greater Biddeford community and to empower them to become better citizens through the lessons of sports, including sportsmanship, teamwork, discipline, courage, and healthy competition. Sounds a lot like the mission of SALP - many thanks!