This is Starfinder Cup. This is an annual corporate soccer tournament that we run as
a way to raise funds for the organization. Starfinder was founded in 2002 and it's a
youth development organization. Everything that we do is based in soccer. Soccer is
the hook for engaging youth through their passion, but we connect that to a whole range
of supports that really are designed to help youth thrive. I love this event because we
get senior leaders out to come and coach different teams. You're enthusiastic, you're
learning how to be a coach, you're learning how to be a leader and to motivate your team
to score and teach them how to play soccer just like they do us. This year I managed
SKF, which was really really cool. They were really nice and they helped me become less
shy when it was speaking to adults. We work with kids who come from all around Philadelphia.
We particularly target kids living in lower income and underserved communities. So these
are kids who have the same aspirations as anyone else, but often don't have the resources
in the support system. It's great to see something like Starfinder connect with those
youths to get them passionate about something from what I've seen. Passion can kind of drive
pursuits of not just soccer but anything else that they might want. So I think what Starfinder
really does is it gives people a chance to be able to be better, to be able to graduate
high school, to go on to college, to have a career. And they've also gotten some coaches
to come down here and watch us during practice and help us. So that really helped because
that's the first time I met the head coach and he actually recruited me even outside of here.
We had many of the kids who are in our program who become the captains of their high school
soccer teams, who then go on to get scholarships and go on to college and who become leaders in a
whole bunch of ways in their own lives and in their own communities. And that for us is success.
We would love to see them play soccer at a serious level but that's not why we're here.
We're about developing those leaders and these kids who say I know what I want to do,
now I understand how to get here, I know how to work hard and I feel supported to achieve that.
That's when we really get success.
