Unwilling to surrender to their financial circumstances, 19 school children in Taoyuan County took to the streets at the beginning of summer, selling stuffed toys, beaded jewelry and even garlic to raise funds for a trip to Guangxi Province, China, to compete in an invitational soccer tournament next month.
The award-winning soccer players from Tong An Elementary School have so far collected NT$240,000 (US$8,330), close to half of the NT$510,000 needed for the trip.
They are not the only sports team that has taken to heart the Chinese idiom “better to rely on oneself than on others.”
Over the past two years, the “Peach Baseball Team,” made up of young baseball players from Yanping Township (延平), Taitung County, has also been selling homegrown peaches in Taipei City to raise funds.
With the money its members made, the team was able to compete with community teams in Taipei’s Wenshan District (文山).
For the past month, the Tong An soccer team’s players have been starting their daily routine with three hours of sales on the streets close to school.
“Please support our efforts to participate in games overseas,” boys and girls say to passersby.
Team captain Hsu Tzi-yang (許子颺) said that every morning when they leave home, they all have one thought in mind — how to sell the items they had either made or purchased at wholesale stores to raise enough funds for their trip to Guangxi from Aug. 5 through Aug. 10.
The team, established in 2002, won their first international gold medal in 2005 in Sweden at a tournament for eight-year-olds. The next year, they won a bronze medal in Austria.
“Without the media’s help, they might not have been able to travel to Austria,” team coach Yu Kun-min (游崑銘) said.
He said some of the children are from underprivileged families and had cried when they realized their parents could not afford the trip.
However, thanks to the media exposure, the problem was resolved, he said. The news reports touched the hearts of some local entrepreneurs, who donated money to help the children realize their dream, he added.
It is not easy, however, to promote the sport in a country that favors baseball, Yu said.
“The soccer team has been forced to play on a concrete field because the managers of a nearby park do not want us playing there for fear we will damage the grass,” the coach said.
He added that the government has not been supportive of the sport.
Meanwhile, from late April to early May, the Peach Baseball Team sold more than 800 boxes of peaches in Wenshan. With their expanding funds, the “Peaches” have grown from one to three teams. This year, three Peach teams have traveled to Taipei to compete in games.
The interaction between the Yanping Township and Wenshan District baseball teams, led by the Peaches, resulted in a government decision in May to provide NT$12 million over three years to continue the rural-urban engagement.
Under the program, about 80 children from Taipei will travel to Taitung next month for a baseball camp, said Pai Chih-tang (白志棠), one of the organizers.
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