Okoye leads charity trip to Africa

leroy · May 14, 2009

NFL players lend a hand on charity trip to Africa

By KRISTIE RIEKEN, AP Sports Writer 10 hours, 43 minutes ago

HOUSTON (AP)—Amobi Okoye couldn’t take his eyes off the little girl in the colorful dress.

The Houston Texans tackle walked past her but was immediately drawn back. What was her story? What did she need?

And, most importantly, how could he help?

He met hundreds of children during a recent eight-day charity trip with other NFL players to Africa, but the image of that one little girl at a medical clinic he organized was burned into his memory.

Children like her are the reason he went to Africa. And the same children motivate the 21-year-old to do so much more.

“It’s just unfortunate that she can’t have the medical care she needs to better herself and for her to live,” Okoye said. “I think at that moment I really understood.”

Health care is an important part of his work, but education is his main focus. The Nigerian-born Okoye believes the best way to improve the lives of children in Africa is through improved educational opportunities.

That’s why he assembled a group of players for a voyage to the continent to distribute scholarships and organize clinics on everything from female empowerment to AIDS education.

Good work to be sure, but he has a much grander vision, with plans to open a school in Nigeria to help educate some of the 4 million who lack access to basic education.

Okoye is a perfect example of the benefits of hard work and a good education. He started high school at 12 and college at 16. He passed up Harvard to play football at Louisville and graduated in 3 1/2 years with a degree in psychology.

When he was chosen with the 10th pick in the 2007 draft, he was just 19, making him the youngest player drafted in the NFL since 1967.

It was then that, Okoye says, he decided he’d use some of his NFL riches to help those less fortunate in Houston and in his home country.

“I’m not the most spiritual person, my mom is,” he said. “But after I got drafted I really had a revelation and it’s probably the first revelation I ever had in my life. And that revelation was that there was a plan and purpose for my life and this is part of it.”

In the second consecutive offseason trip to the continent, Okoye was joined by Houston teammate Xavier Adibi, Osi Umenyiora of the New York Giants and Chicago’s Adewale Ogunleye, Israel Idonije and Tommie Harris.

He’ll tell anyone who will listen about the wonders of taking such a trip and hopes to increase the size of the group each year. He plans to take a trip every year and said ideas for new projects come to him on each visit.

For Ogunleye, taking the trip with players from other teams forms a unique friendship.

“We share a common bond, like a fraternity or a secret society,” he said. “These are memories that we’re going to always have. Building these relationships through our work in Africa is special.”

Though the trip involved long days filled with teaching and travel, the players say it was refreshing to leave the circus of the NFL world behind them and be embraced for their good deeds instead of their celebrity status.

“They had no clue who we were,” Ogunleye said. “Without the NFL shield we were able to experience a more genuine type of love. The Chicago Bears are a machine. Lifelong fans will be here rooting for the team regardless if it’s me or who is playing. But in Africa we’re all playing for one team and that’s humanity.”

The clinic where Okoye met the little girl was one of five daylong programs in different states that the players and four doctors from Oklahoma organized. The group gave medical advice and checkups along with distributing medical samples and vitamins.

The players also hosted a pair of football camps for local children. Most of the children didn’t know anything about football. It didn’t matter. Okoye believes getting involved in sports will help them avoid joining gangs or being recruited as child soldiers.

“They don’t understand, but they’re interested to find out,” Okoye said. “I know that being Nigerian and living there growing up, a lot of the guys think that they’re the biggest and the baddest. The thing about football is a chance for you to do that legally. That’s what I tell them when I went down there, so hopefully they can listen to that and be more interested in it.”

Okoye was impressed by a young boy who had never touched a football before, but found he could fling it about 50 yards during one of the camps.

“Just to see him and his athletic ability brought some joy to my life,” Okoye said.

He hopes his school will be a place where involvement in sports will encourage excellence in education. It’s still in the planning stages, but he met with politicians and local leaders on his visit to Nigeria to inform them of his intentions and rally support for the project.

He knows this will be the most difficult project he’s undertaken, but is confident it will happen.

“I want to educate through football,” he said. “I just hope and believe in my heart that it’s going to work.”

And after all he’s accomplished in just 21 years it’s easy to believe that it will.
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Just another reason to root for the Texans and Amobi Okoye.

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