A Toronto Team Effort For Youth

September 30, 2008


It’s like watching the Superfriends in action.

Toronto’s four professional sports teams-The Maple Leafs, Blue Jays, Raptors and Argonauts-are, ah, teaming up to collaborate their four charitable efforts under the “Team Up For Youth” partnership.

It’s part of Ontario’s Youth Challenge Fund (YCF) which aims to connect with youth and to provide them with ways to reach their full education and employment potential.

There’s no specific details on how Team Up For Youth is going to do that, though the fund has $1.4 million to make that happen. There are YCF Nights planned for each of the teams, and we’ll probably see player appearances-one from each team would really drive the message home- and donations to city sports programs to help turn around at-risk youth.

Professional sports teams are in a unique position to influence the community this way-where else will you see the top achievers in an organization so admired by youth?-but so often their efforts don’t do much beyond the typical “Don’t Do Drugs/Stay In School” messages. Hopefully, we’ll see Team Up For Youth try something a little different.

It’s unfortunately reached the point where it seems professional teams are only paying lip service to youth issues. Team Up For Youth is going to have to do more than expected to show they want to make a difference.

Maybe the all-star dream team can come up with really innovative solutions to the problem-employ at-risk youth in their organizations, for example.

If all four of Toronto’s teams bring their A-game to this initiative, not only will it improve their images, it will truly help Toronto’s youth make it to the big leagues.

And this concludes the post where I cram in as many sports-related puns as possible.

It’s like watching the Superfriends in action.

Toronto’s four professional sports teams-The Maple Leafs, Blue Jays, Raptors and Argonauts-are, ah, teaming up to collaborate their four charitable efforts under the “Team Up For Youth” partnership.


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