Youth Sports Advocacy Philippine’s, Incorporated YSA
Project YSA Ouezon City

Volunteer health practitioners come along to the sites to conduct medical check-ups for free and to introduce the preventive measures against epidemics to the Mangyans.

Another important aspect Keep Hope Alive hopes to establish is the importance of nurturing cultural heritage. After showing the residents a cultural presentation. they engage them into focus-group talks on how to sustain and develop their rich culture. The volunteers assessed the target schools and communities to identify their needs and eventually came up with the five-themed strategy supported by different foreign, government and non-government organizations.

The organization is rooted back in 2007. when five friends in their college years visited an

orphanage in San Juan for an outreach and found the experience to be too short. “We came up with this idea that we would form an organization focusing on the welfare of children.’ tells chairman and co-founder Sheman Gamol. specifying the volunteer group’s goal of establishing three more centers.

Keep Hope Alive has a total of 650 members, most based in Mindoro. Others who weren’t involved in the actual outreach projects support the organization via online support, planning and fund-raising. After winning the TAYO 13. they plan to expand to Romblon and Palawan.

Nothing brings a community together in a friend her, healthier and more competitive way other than sports.

Youth Sports Advocacy CYSAJ Philippine’s, Incorporated envisions a world filled with individuals who live day-to-day by the many positive values developed in an athlete like discipline, teamwork. and camaraderie. Aside from being a fun activity for kids. studies have shown that the more children play sports. the greater attachment they have with their community.

Project YSA started when founder Tony Faye Tan. 26. decided to teach volleyball to three kids she found playing outside her house.

“All of us are capable of making a change,” Tan says. “I never thought our organization would grow this large.”

Growing up as an athlete. she attests to not only the positive physical effects of sports in an individual. but also in his social well-being. The visionary, photographer, aspiring lawyer and volleyball player believes in the ability of sports to a better society and to give children a better idea of playing, diverting their attention away from the negative effects of technology, especially computer games.

However. it was through the propagating power of social media that news of the volunteer sports program accelerated far and wide, bringing in more trainers and trainees to Tan’s neighborhood in Tandang Sora. Quezon City where they hold the sessions every weekend.

Three turned into twenty. and the number of kids who wanted to learn more about sports kept growing. as did the number of volunteers who wanted to teach them.

Today. YSA has around 149 (athlete and non-athlete) sporting advocates to share the mission of making a change in Philippine society by sha

ring their skills and knowledge about sports to the youth.

Around 80 children Caging 4-12 years-old) are interacting with each other and learn sports they all love and sports they want to know more about like volleyball. basketball. football, badminton, flag football, table tennis, wrestling. touch rugby, track and field, lawn tennis and fencing.