CTD Development Services Inc COVID19 Campaign

The people this fundraiser will benefit are the nearly 700 children, ages 5 to 13, whose plans to play soccer and be mentored by some incredible organizations this Spring were cut short by the COVID19 crisis. These kids live in low-income neighborhoods in the LA South Bay. They come from the cities of Hawthorne, Inglewood, Lawndale, and Lennox. Their parents lack the resources and know how to substitute the skills training, the physical fitness training, and academic mentoring they were going to receive from my clients. 

My clients are:
- South Bay Premier League (SBPL). It is the only youth soccer league left in the city of Lennox, where the median income is $41,000 for a family of 5, and only half of its residents ages 25 and older have a high school diploma. With 135 players already playing on one of the 25 teams in the Winter 5 v 5 Futsal tournament, and the Spring-Summer 11 v 11 season about to begin, SBPL was about to register an additional 150 kids - most of them from the city of Lennox. 

- LA South Bay FC . It is a soccer player development and mentoring organization that has been doing magical work with the children that attend the Inglewood Unified School District (IUSD) for over 20 years. They work primarily with the children that live in the 90301 and 90303 zip codes, the poorest parts of the city. In these areas the household size and median income levels are nearly identical to those of Lennox . LA South Bay FC already had 440 elementary and middle school students registered to play in this Spring's soccer league.

- Pura Tecnica Futbol . PTF is an elite soccer training organization with over 50,000 followers on Instagram. It is run by Lennox native Humberto Villegas, one of the most sought after soccer trainers and coaches in Los Angeles. For the last few years he's been coaching well-funded youth teams from the Los Angeles Westside, as those are the only communities that can afford to offer him a full-time coaching position. This winter, with the intent of becoming a mentor-trainer for the disadvantaged children of the LA South Bay,  he launched the Pura Tecnica Futbol Soccer Academy for Toddlers at Thorpe Park, in the city of Hawthorne. Capable of enrolling as many as 132 players, and having just been approved to promote the program in the Lawndale School District, the prospect of providing affordable elite training in the communities he came from was right around the corner.

The COVID19 crisis and its social distancing requirements have brought all of their original plans (and sources of revenue) to a grinding halt. Worst of all, the nearly 700 children enrolled will not be able to find nor afford a substitute to the life long benefits they were about to gain from participating in these programs.

My three clients have now retooled and reorganized their programs so that they can still engage and develop their young clients, and reduce the tragic and irreversible loss of continuity and opportunity they're experiencing at multiple levels. 

Our only problem now is funding. Through contracts with the school districts and the fees they would collect from teams and parents, the owners of these three small businesses could pay for field space, equipment, uniforms, referees, and their staff. They could also pay themselves. The inability to collect fees, the loss of income to most of the families we serve, and the shutdown of the schools has eliminated all possibility that my clients can pull together the resources needed to develop and deliver their programs online - even after the stay at home orders are lifted.

Only with your help can we deliver on our promise to not let COVID19  put the kids we serve at an even further disadvantage than they already are. Please give as much as you can. 

Through my mostly video-updates to this story I am going to give you full reason for wanting to make a donation. I hope you visit our page often, that you donate as soon as possible, and that you ask to become a sustaining member of the organization sponsoring this fundraiser, CTD Development Services Inc , a registered 501(c)3 non-profit organization.

Thank you for your support.