A lot of the work that players are passionate about here at Big League Impact focuses on helping people who are living below the extreme poverty level. According to the World Bank, the extreme poverty level means living on less than $1.90 (USD) per day. But we see it as much more than that.
Big League Impact has visited families and young people in the Dominican Republic, Haiti, and Ethiopia who are living well below the poverty line. Children who are so malnourished that they don’t have enough energy to breathe, women and young children risking their safety to walk three miles each day for water, families living under sheets of metal in the remote countryside, and mothers having no choice but to eat the only food the family has while watching their children slowly suffer from starvation. That is living below the poverty line.
We cannot say that there is a dollar amount that works across the board. What we can say is that if you have no hope of drinking clean water, no ability to choose who gets to eat and who doesn’t, no access to basic medical care, or no ability to protecting yourself from the elements – you are living in extreme poverty.
There is hope within each of these communities, within the people themselves. There is hope through education, clean water systems, medical distribution (a young doctor in Haiti whom we know delivers medicine by motorcycle to remote villages), sanitation, and indigenous community training and leadership. We are seeing it work!
Imagine if we could end extreme poverty in our lifetimes? Imagine if the entire sports world came together. Owners, players, fans. Imagine what we could do.
A group from the Effective Altruist Institute ran a quick report for us when our organization got started and they quickly came to the conclusion that if 10% of all the money spent on sports in the world was given to effective charities, we could eliminate extreme poverty seven times over.
This is why we exist and we know that we can do it! Together we WILL ALL make a Big League Impact.
