A few short months ago, several Cornell student athletes (including the captain of the fencing team, a member of the men’s swimming team and the point guard of the women’s basketball team) were all paired together for a project in Human Ecology 301: Collaborative Leadership. Their project was to create a program on campus that would better the greater community. Every other facet of the program including the focus, the scope and the management was at their discretion.

While exercise, good health and nutrition practices were nothing out of the ordinary for these athletes, they understood that this was not typical for most people, especially young children in the United States. According to the National Institutes of Health, childhood obesity has recently become an epidemic in this country. The number of American children categorized as obese has doubled in the past two to three decades.

According to Brenda Bricker, who teaches HE 301, this group initially “was really focused on young kids and their not being physically fit and missing the fun in being involved in organized sports.”

But after discovering Sports Gift, a national organization whose mission statement reads that it is “focused on providing sports to underprivileged children throughout the world,” the group decided to expand the goal of their program and start a chapter of Sports Gift on Cornell’s campus.

“We all had a goal to help people both here and abroad,” said Greg Calosso ’10, the treasurer of Sports Gift. Calosso described the “two-pronged” approach of the Sports Gift chapter that the group started. In keeping with their initial objective, the group wants to go into local Ithaca schools to promote healthy eating and exercise habits. The second objective, more in line with the goal of the national Sports Gift organization, is to initiate drives to collect new and used sporting goods for underprivileged children.

Calosso explained that the national Sports Gift organization allocates the donated sporting equipment to children in foreign countries and continents like India, South America and Africa, as well as to needy children in the United States.

So far, the Cornell chapter has “collected over 100 pairs of running shoes donated by The Finger Lakes Running Company,” Calosso said. They have also collected over 70 pieces of sporting equipment from the fraternities Sigma Phi, Delta Chi and Sigma Chi, which several of the members of Sports Gift belong to.

The current goal of the Cornell chapter of Sports Gift is to send all the equipment they have collected to the Sports Gift national headquarters in California.

“One problem we encountered this year was we cannot apply for funding [through SAFC],” Calosso said.

Since this chapter of Sports Gift was only founded at Cornell last October, the organization was not eligible to apply for funding through the University. The chapter needs funding in order to ship all the equipment to the headquarters in California. While the group members’ difficulty of obtaining funding was an unfortunate setback for them, Bricker had a more positive interpretation of this struggle.

“They’re trying to create something from nothing,” Bricker said. “We want them to have roadblocks and stumbles.” Bricker expressed a desire for the members of Sports Gift to learn that they may have to develop multiple approaches to solve a particular problem because often the original solution will not work out, like when the group tried to obtain funding through the University.

Currently, Sports Gift is in the process of applying for funding through the Interfraternity Council. If they receive that particular grant, they hope to be able to ship the sporting equipment to California shortly after.

In addition to collecting sporting equipment, Sports Gift has also begun implementing the second facet of their organization. The group members visited Ithaca’s Belle Sherman Elementary School, where they taught children about the importance of eating healthy and exercising. The group created pamphlets about healthy snacking alternatives, and even brought some specific examples with them. Phil Baity ’09, a member of Sports Gift, described how the children were very responsive to the visit. Since many of the members were athletes, the students were intrigued by them and were intent to listen to their every word.

“I wouldn’t have thought the kids would be that interested,” Baity said about the children’s attitude toward the healthy snacks brought by the members.

Surrounded by accomplished athletes, the children were also very eager to showcase their own athletic abilities. Bricker described how many of the children engaged so rigorously in the games they played that they became red in the face. While playing the game “Knock Out,” many of the students wanted to impress Lauren Benson ’10, a point guard for the women’s basketball team.

In explaining why Sports Gift decided to go into an elementary school to talk to the students as opposed to a middle school or high school, Baity explained that healthy habits need to start at an early age. It was important for the children to learn the importance of eating healthy and exercising regularly around their elementary school so that these can become habitual routines as they continue through their lives.

“If you’re going to become a Division I athlete, you need to start early,” Baity said.

While Baity hopes the organization his group created will expand, Bricker has seen many of the groups her students created fail to continue after the course has ended. Even though she requires “each of the teams to [make] a plan for sustainability,” she explained that it takes extremely motivated people to maintain their organization.

“They only survive if a few people care that much,” Bricker said. “But the students from Sports Gift are determined to make their program successful.”