A bootiful gesture

BOOTS MADE FOR KICKING: New boots bring a smile to the face of a Cambodian child and (inset) David Lewis.

Source: Southern Courier
Author: Joshua Levi
Tue 15 Apr, 2008

Underprivileged Cambodian children are wearing the best soccer boots money can buy thanks to the generosity of Eastern Suburbs parents and the Indochina Starfish Foundation.

Eastern Suburbs Football Association representative David Lewis recently travelled to Cambodia with hundreds of soccer boots for the kids and saw firsthand the squalid conditions kids live in.

"The kids go to the rubbish dump every day and just collect items that they can sell so that their family can eat," he said. "They earn about 25 cents a day. I can't even describe the rubbish dump because it is literally mountains of rubbish, you can smell the stench from kilometres away."

Lewis said the foundation's program seemed to be working.

"Instead of throwing money at these people, we provide food to parents, which is worth a lot more than 25 cents, on the proviso that the parents send their kids to our schools," he said.

"Then we tell the kids that they can have the outfits and play soccer if they attend classes, so everyone wins."

Many Eastern Suburbs parents throw out soccer boots valued at nearly $200 after only a year because kids are grow out of them. Lewis now asks local clubs for boots at the end of every season to send to Cambodia.

"Our kids are kitted out better than their national soccer team," he said. "If you take into account that they earn 25 cents a day, you can only imagine what it must be like to get soccer boots worth more than $100 that, in many cases, have only been worn about 30 times."

Through his friend Puma Korea general manager Ian Woodcock, Lewis has also secured more than $10,000 worth of brand new puma gear.

Lewis said the foundation would now focus on providing better resources for education.

"Australian schools waste paper, books, coloured pencils and pens, these kids don't have basic supplies," he said. Over the next year we will have a major focus on collecting second hand items and items that we often waste."