Tracy McGrady and Darfur

I was thinking about what next to blog about. There was the Super Bowl and how the game went (which I thought ended wrongly, should've been reviewed). There was the issue with Michael Phelps and the picture of him smoking marajuana (he was wrong in doing that, at least he took responsiblity when it came out).

But when I saw this article, I thought this was the one I would share and speak on. In September 2007, Tracy McGrady, All-Star Forward for the Houston Rockets went to the Darfur region in Sudan to see for himself what was going on there with the genocide. It was an eye-opening experience for him and from that has helped to establish the Darfur Dream Team Sister Schools program. Here's the description of the program from their website (http://www.darfurdreamteam.org/):

The Sister Schools Program is an initiative to connect American middle schools, high schools, colleges, and universities with sister schools in the 12 refugee camps in Chad. The two main objectives of the program are: (1) to provide a quality education to every refugee child from Darfur and (2) to develop connections between students from Darfur and the U.S. Through the Sister Schools Program, students in the U.S. will make commitments to a UN-affiliated registry for items such as textbooks and teacher training. Video linkages between the schools in the camps and the U.S. schools will connect the students and be a vehicle for cross-cultural exchange. NBA players will be major recruiters for the program and will also make financial contributions to refugee camp schools.

It is good to hear these stories getting out. Athletes are role models and they can make an impact both negatively and positively. I'm glad to hear that Tracy is involved in something like this. More people need to hear about the evils that are taking place in Darfur and the responsibility, especially of those who follow Jesus, to get involved in effecting change there.

I'll leave you with this video that documents some of Tracy's visit to Darfur:



(The article was from ESPN.com and can be viewed here)