Tennis Player Roger Federer Provides Schooling And Food For A Million Children
Swiss tennis player Roger Federer has been involved with numerous philanthropic efforts since forming his foundation in 2004.
His primary focus with the foundation is to improve education for children, especially in places where they have extremely limited access. In the past 15 years, Federer has opened schools all over the world. In Malawi, in Southen Africa, Federer has already built over 50 preschools.
During one of his visits to the schools in Malawi, Federer said, “I’m so happy and emotional that I can see a preschool of this quality here–it’s quite extraordinary. The community is so committed to helping the kids, it’s so important (as) the foundation for learning.”
In 2015, the Roger Federer Foundation said that they hoped to be feeding and teaching one million kids by 2018. The goal seemed incredible, but the foundation was able to make it happen by the time that they promised.
n a statement after the goal was completed, Roger Federer Foundation CEO Janine Händel said that it took a lot of hard work to see their task through.
“It took a lot of work and determination to achieve this amazing thing. There was no other possibility than achieving this goal because Roger always achieves his goals. There are one million children which benefits from the major quality of education in the school, pre-school, kindergarten. One million children have now a better chance to make their way in life, to get a job, to exit from poverty…Roger believes in the empowerment of the people and their potential. That’s a fundamental value in our every-day work. We strongly believe early education is one of the most powerful weapons to empower children exiting from poverty. It’s actually proven that education makes people better citizen, be more prepared when it comes to dealing with issues, and they have more instruments to manage their life,” Händel said.
Federer has won 20 Grand Slam singles titles, which is the most in history by a male player, and has held the world’s top spot in the ATP rankings for a record total of 310 weeks. He is also the only person to have won the BBC Overseas Sports Personality of the Year award four times.
