The Seeds of a dream
Aaron Basnyet
Co-Founder, All4Ball
It seems like a standard response for a thirteen-year-old to state that he is passionate about helping others. While this is true, that is all I want to do now and throughout my high school and college years and beyond. This is because I am experiencing this joy right now with my nonprofit organization, all4ball of fundraising and changing lives one by one through sports.
At dinnertime, my mother would share stories of the poverty of the small towns of her homeland, Nepal. I often wondered how I could help, so when I visited Nepal in 2018, the first place we went to was a school. The front of the building was covered with tall grass and bushes, and that was the only place the children could play for recess. We continued up a dirt path to the main part of the school where I saw children inside the classrooms sitting on the floor surrounding one low table. The school could not afford chairs and desks for the forty children that they had. I had already heard about the situation, so on my eleventh birthday, I collected money instead of asking for gifts. With the $1,000 I raised, I set out to build a multipurpose sports field, and the kids use it for different activities, varying from sports to assemblies year around. My passion was born in Nepal. I knew what I wanted to do.
Being brought up in America, I never saw kids without shoes. Most of the students in this school were barefoot because they could not afford them. Knowing this, I came prepared with forty pairs of new shoes. On that same visit, my brother, his friends, and I brought soccer balls and taught the students the basic rules and skills of the sport. The smile on their faces made me feel so good about my choices to help and to bring joy, and I thought to myself that if one person could put a smile on forty kids, if others contributed, it could change the whole world. On that flight back home to America, I achieved my short-term goal, but it was not enough. I was eager for how I could continue changing lives.
I put my eyes on new ways to help those unfortunate. I wanted to raise money quickly, so on New Year’s Day, I baked cookies and brownies and sold them while also collecting used soccer cleats and jerseys from my teammates. I wanted the kids in Nepal to have a chance to use the same equipment as us. I raised another $1,000 to build another multipurpose field for another school through a raffle sale. And the ideas kept stacking up.
I found ways to help Nepal without even being there. I teach a computer class to kids in an orphanage in Pokhara, Nepal through Zoom. I am Microsoft PowerPoint and Word certified, so I educate them about the basics of these programs. I make a lesson plan before each class and teach them how to perform a function, and because of the time difference, I must log on at nighttime. Once, I asked my students what their goals and dreams were, and they all had normal aspirations to be a sports player or a doctor, but it hit me that they had little opportunity being in Nepal as opposed to my American dreams.
As a result of my non-profit, ‘All4ball,’ which promotes and informs people about my work in Nepal, I have a continued passion for my future to help people through science and medicine, and what better way to continue changing the world than by helping others feel healthier, happier, and better? And while I do not know specifically what kind of doctor or scientist I am going to become, I do know that my passion for people all started in 2018 in front of one school in Nepal.
