By Rahul Brahmbhatt | General Manager - Magic Bus USA
Dear Friends,
With 10 days remaining before the Magic Bus girls and coaches make their way to the US, we figured it was the perfect time to send you the latest status update on how things are going.
With the funds raised through this campaign and an additional major donor from Julie Foudy's network, we were able to raise enough money to sponsor the trip this year for 6 girls and 2 coaches. The flights have also been purchased and the team arrives in Houston on June 21st.
Julie and Magic Bus are very excited to see how this year's camp and interactions will go based on the learnings from last year's experiment. The 6 girls this year are a mix of returnees and new campers from Mumbai. The returnees will be given more leadership roles and will be asked to help the others break the ice in the first few days of the camp.
The coach this time is similar to Parvati, who many of you met in April. Sheetal Hedulkar is 27 years old and comes from a lower middle class family in Mumbai. She is one of the specialized soccer coaches at Magic Bus, but more importantly, she works as a Monitoring Officer at Magic Bus - one of the staff that measures the quality of programs delivered to children in slums by the youth community leaders - so she brings a wealth of knowledge of the real developmental issues on the ground in the slums of Mumbai.
We are excited to have her share her story with the people she meets.
On June 23, we will be hosting a free picnic/meet and greet with the team where Houston can come out and spend a few hours with the girls and experience exactly what the programs look like and why they are so effective - from the girls themselves. Please feel free to join and invite your friends and family in Houston to meet with the beneficiaries of your donations!
Early morning June 24, we head from Houston to Newark and arrive at the Julie Foudy Sports Leadership Academy for Girls, the place the team will call home for the next 5 days.
Similar to the Houston event, there will be two opportunities for those in the NYC area to come out and meet the team and learn more about them and their journey. On June 30, the Magic Bus team will scrimmage and play a friendly match with girls from the Gotham Girls Football Club in Manhattan.
You can find links below to the events taking place in Houston and NYC. Look out for more reports in the coming weeks along with a few photos of the girls during their time here!
Thanks again for your continued support and fee free to share these reports with your networks!
Regards,
Rahul
Links:
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