Empowering underprivileged children through the gift of sports equipment, providing them with equal opportunities for growth, inclusion, and personal development.
Arya Jamkhandi and Aanya Singh, rising juniors at Saint Francis High School, co-founded the P.L.A.Y.S. Foundation (Promoting Leadership in Athletics and Youth Sports). Both varsity athletes, they believe sports build essential skills like communication, leadership, and confidence. Their foundation aims to provide underprivileged children with used sports equipment, promoting physical health, self-confidence, and personal growth.
P.L.A.Y.S. recently completed its first drive, donating 90 pieces of equipment to the Boys and Girls Club of the Peninsula, supporting afterschool programs for children in unsafe neighborhoods. With support from Saint Francis coaches and sports director Mr. Wilburn, they collected equipment at the school. Upcoming initiatives include a second drive to support girls in Honduras. Currently, collection boxes are located at Sunnyvale Sports Basement and Cupertino Valley Church, with plans to place community flyers to spread awareness.
My name is Arya Jamkhandi and my co-founder is Aanya Singh, and we are both rising juniors at Saint Francis High School, in Mountain View California. I play soccer, and Aanya plays tennis. Growing up playing sports, we have forged a deep connection with our sport, and attest to the fact that playing and competing has helped us become better people. We believe that sports should be a part of all kids' lives, because it builds vital communication, leadership, and confidence. Playing a sport doesn’t just help skills on the field, it also encourages growth off the field in the real world. Unfortunately, not all people are fortunate enough to afford expensive equipment and gear, which is where P.L.A.Y.S. Foundation comes into play.
Our foundation, P.L.A.Y.S, which stands for Promoting Leadership in Athletics and Youth Sports, wants to change that. Our mission is to provide underprivileged kids with used sports equipment to promote physical health, leadership, and self-confidence. Another one of our main goals is to create inclusive opportunities for personal growth and community engagement through the gift of sports. By invoking the help of our communities, we are able to level out the inequity that poverty creates, and donate equipment to underserved and underprivileged communities. We recently just completed our first drive, in which we donated about 90 pieces of equipment to the Boys and Girls Club of the Peninsula, which will use the proceeds to help kids in their afterschool program, which caters to kids who live in an unsafe neighborhood.
We set up the drive in Feb'24 at Saint Francis High School, which we attend, and with the help of our many coaches and Mr. Wilburn, our sports director, we were able to place deposit boxes in order to collect that equipment. In the coming months, we also hope to start our second drive, which will help girls in Honduras play more sports and gain leadership and communication skills. We hope to continue spreading the word through our communities. Currently, we have deposit boxes placed in the Sunnyvale Sports Basement and the Cupertino Valley Church. We also are going to place flyers up throughout the community to hopefully spread the word.