BUILDING DREAMS WITH DREAMFIELDS
The Dreamfields Project is a charity that operates in partnership with the South African department of education to help build and implement complete soccer facilities for schools in rural areas.
VC+ is a non-profit creative collective that uses creativity to fund and fuel existing charities. This year, we are teaming up with The Dreamfields Project to inspire young children to follow their passions & their talents.
VC+SA is a collaboration between VC+ and Dreamfields.
A TOTAL TEAM EFFORT
In Feburary of 2014, VC+ and Dreamfields together traveled to Cottondale, a rural community in Mpumalanga, South Africa where 13 creative workshops were held at 13 schools. Together we taught over 500 children about design and the power design has to communicate. We then helped the children use their own creative imaginations, talent, ideas and voice to concept & design their school’s soccer team uniform.
As a team of creatives professionals, VC+ saw an opportunity to support Dreamfields in a way that could further fuel their efforts. VC+ recognized the importance of identity, design and ownership. So rather than just providing the schools with a generic uniform, with an impersonal team name, color and logo, VC+ and Dreamfields took it one step further to give them the power to represent themselves.
In March of 2014, VC+ brought back all 13 school kit designs to New York City. We shared the children’s artwork with 13 acclaimed artists around the world. Each artist was assigned one school and brought each school’s team logo & identity to completion.
Inspired and creative directed by the children themselves, brought to life by professional renown artists, Dreamfields for the first time ever provided meaningful team identities for each team’s soccer kit.
In September 2014, VC+ and Dreamfields reunited in Mpumalanga and hand delivered the final, personalized, first-of-its-kind, team soccer kits to each of the 13 schools.
For many, if not all of these kids, the uniform shirts we provided was their first organized team uniform they ever wore. It most likely was the first time they wore something that wasn’t second hand. But beyond just “shiny & new,” we harnessed the children’s creative talent to give their soccer kits more value & meaning; not only for them but for their schools & their community.
Soccer has always provided a way to teach kids about discipline, determination, team work and commitment. But the only way to allow soccer to be a positive force in schools is to allow children to play regular matches on a league basis – week in and week out.
Working together with the headmasters of all 13 schools, VC+ and Dreamfields not only outfitted the children with uniforms, but provided full kits, goal posts, coaching for educators and all the necessary equipment for a long-term soccer infrastructure in Cottondale.
On October 3, 2014, VC + Dreamfields + Cottondale celebrated the launch of this new soccer program with the first ever soccer tournament — in which of course the children proudly wore their new team uniforms.
FUELING YOUNG TALENT
Soccer has been a beloved South African sport and has been ignited in the hearts of South Africans even more since the hosting of 2010 World Cup. In South Africa soccer continues to educate, empower and strengthen children & communities. Soccer fields have become a place of common ground between rich and poor, black and white, brown and yellow, advantaged and disadvantaged.
Our mission for VC+SA is to support Dreamfields and their efforts to provide soccer into townships and rural schools across South Africa as well as to inspire and ignite even one child to follow his or her passions and talent — be it on the soccer field, in the creative field, or wherever their heart pulls them.
Any purchase you make from the DREAMFIELDS FC Collection means you too are joining our team and fueling young talent on & off the field.
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Grow more dreams at dreamfieldsproject.org
See the total team effort behind the Dreamfields FC Collection at vcplus.org
100% Non-Profit. 100% Tax Deductible. For further donations go to http://www.vcplus.org/sa/donate/
VC+ Inc. is a New York Nonprofit Corporation 501(c)3 / Tax ID #46-4261313.