When Amy Kuehn, former member of the Marketing team for the Minnesota Timberwolves, was looking for her next sports-related endeavor, she was hoping for a way to give back to the community. The Sanneh Foundation (TSF) came across her desk and it was a no-brainer.

The mission of TSF is to empower youth, improve lives, and unite communities through programs that strengthen physical health and social and emotional development. Their biggest program, in terms of the number of kids participating, is their youth sports programming.

Similarly to Amy, it was a no-brainer for LeagueApps to choose to partner with the Sanneh Foundation as part of our FundPlay initiative and provide them with access to our software for free. TSF uses LeagueApps software to make administrative tasks—like registration tracking and communicating with families—easier.

The Twin Cities has a significant opportunity gap—so TSF focuses its efforts on diverse, low-income urban and immigrant youth populations. They aim to assist these communities by offering a variety of engaging and developmentally stimulating programs including free community camps in soccer, basketball, flag football, baseball, and golf. The goal of these free camps is to give young children whose parents may not have the means to spend hundreds of dollars to try out a sport an opportunity to do so.

Other programs offered by TSF include:

• Dreamline—an academic intervention program providing under-performing, low-income students in public middle schools and high schools with tutoring, afterschool enrichment activities, in-school academic assistance.

Dreamline has prompted a 400% improvement in Language Arts grades and a 500% improvement in Math grades.

• Haitian Initiative—designed to motivate kids to stay in school, this collaboration uses soccer as a catalyst to combat poverty in Haiti. In order to participate in the soccer program, which occurs six days a week, students require regular school attendance and passing grades.

• Sanneh Nutrition Services—a food distribution program that packages and distributes meals six days a week to help close the food insecurity gap in the Twin Cities Metro area.

• Kick it Back—an effort to collect soccer shoes, jerseys, balls, and other new and gently used sports equipment and redistribute them to individuals in need.

TSF is a uniquely impactful organization that we’re proud to support because they cover a variety of important barriers that we see in underserved communities access to youth sports—income, equipment access, academic achievement, and communication. They operate with the mentality that if there is a need in the community, they will do their best to fill it.

For more information about the Sanneh Foundation and how you can get involved, visit thesannehfoundation.org. 

Image courtesy The Sanneh Foundation via Facebook