In March of 2016, Brandon Bye and Federico Tavarez, two students at Western Michigan University, started a used-clothing drive for specifically soccer gear in the city of Kalamazoo, Michigan. They hoped to ship the donations overseas to soccer clubs in low-income communities of the Dominican Republic to help children who could not afford proper soccer clothes. The goal was to collect 150-200 donations over a two-month period for just one club in the Dominican Republic. Thanks to the generous donations of several local soccer club and private sponsors, they were able to quadruple their original goal and earned over 800 donations. Fueled and inspired by the surpassing of their original dream, a team of twenty volunteers distributed these donations to eight different clubs around the island later that August.

The journey that a bunch of soccer gear and enthusiastic university students embarked upon from the United States to the Dominican Republic carried more than just material objects. We are overwhelmed by the eagerness of our community in Kalamazoo to improve the conditions for the future generations of developing communities. As the Aspiras Foundation expands and develops, our personal desire to give back and the opportunity to bring joy and positivity to communities suffering hardships fuels the essence of our direction.

Material donations are precious and valuable at the moment, but we realize that they have an expiration date. By investing our time and efforts into educating and providing unprecedented opportunity in any way we can to the children of soccer clubs within developing communities, we hope to empower them to aspire for great goals and achievement. The future of developing areas in the Dominican Republic rests in the hands of the children, so we want to give them the tools to bring positive change to their communities.