Published: September 7, 2009
What were you doing when you were nine years old? Austin Gutwein started a program that has raised more than $1 million to help children in Africa who have lost their parents to AIDS.
Talk about stepping up and making good use of your time instead of wasting countless hours playing video games.
As the story goes, while watching a video with classmates in school, Austin learned every 14 seconds, somewhere in the world, another child is orphaned by HIV/AIDS. This means each day 6,000 children join the 15 million children worldwide who have already lost one or both parents to this disease.
After watching the video Austin realized the kids he saw weren’t any different from him except they were suffering. He felt compelled to do something to help and after talking with his dad decided to shoot free throws on World AIDS Day in 2004. He shot 2,057 free throws to represent the 2,057 kids who would be orphaned during his day at school.
Friends and family sponsored Austin and he was able to raise almost $3,000 and the money was used by World Vision to provide hope to eight orphaned children.
Since then thousands of people have joined Austin in a basketball event spanning the globe called Hoops of Hope. Children in Africa impacted by this program now have access to food, clothing, shelter, a new school and finally, a medical testing facility which he was told would save an entire generation.
I recently had a chance to speak with father, Dan Gutwein, about how Hoops of Hope got started, the amazing success it’s had over the past five years and the book his son Austin is about to release.
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One Comment on "Using Basketball To Help Children In Africa Affected By HIV/AIDS"
cjniya on Fri, 18th Sep 2009 12:18 pm
If you had ever gone to the developing countries in Africa or in South America, you would know how great Angelina Jolie is. She is devoting her life in the charity to improve the situation of children and women in the third world countries. I think the bad situation could not be understood by the ones who had never ever been there.
This summer I had the chance to travel to Africa. I did not go to the spots of interests but go to the poorest areas of that continent, because when I was home I could not imagine how bad situation they were in. Then what I saw shocked me. If I could, I would like to call it the hell. The children were lack of food and medicine. Their lives were threatened by the starvation and AIDS. Some of them were born as HIV sufferers and all they could do is waiting for the death just because they do not have money to last their lives. It is a kind of competition, the starvation and the AIDS are the competitors, they are competing for who take away the children’s lives first. And I met some health children there. All they do every day is trying their best to see the sun rising for the next day. When our children prayed for the Barbie Dolls, toy transformers, Air Jordan or the Spider Man’s cosmetic clothes as the gifts, the children in Africa could play the lanyard with great interests.
During the trip, I cried several times in my tent. At first I was crying for there has no toilet at all. Then as I got with the children and women there, I just cried for their situation. There are so many single mothers and children who would never know who are their fathers. They are living under the threatening of death, but when you are with them you could be moved by their positive attitude. Sometimes I thought that I might suicide if I were in that situation. These children and women need more and more people to take part in the charity activity for rescuing them.