ACA activities help to give back to community

ST LOUIS: American Cricket Academy, a no profit organization set up four years ago, has announced one more activity to its growing list of community oriented processes, holding 1K and 5 K runs to give a boost to its Educted2Succeed program.

The run and walk will commence at 11 am at Quinny Park in St Louis and the participants will be contributing $15, $20 and $30 each which will help in part to fund the ACA Educte2Succeed program. The fee includes giving out Free T-shirts, hydration stations on the course, refreshments at the end of the run/walk and medals.

Gary Budoor, ACA community service team member, said that the target is to help out at least 100 underprivileged kids in India in KG and mid level education. ACA has already selected 10 kids – five in New Delhi and five in Tamil Nadu – and with community help and activities like 5K run/walk the AC team hoped to reach its target.

ACA, Budoor said, was started with an idea of giving back to community through youth sport. Not knowing where and how to start, like minded small group of parents started with sport known and close to their heart – the game of cricket.

Started with six members, ACA now has 200 members and players. Its charity efforts involve athletes and their families on volunteer initiatives across the metro St. Louis area and other counties.

Its first community service project was held for USO Missouri at St. Louis Airport back in 2015 to donate items for in transit reserves active, reserve, retirees and National Guard military members and their families. Since inception, it has been performing non-stop monthly service projects. In 2017 its activities spanned serving food to homeless, volunteering at local food banks, recycling, clean and conserve nature to long term education sponsorship.
ACA also picked up activity helping environment and planted 140+ trees by athletes on Earth Day; took up Missouri River cleaning through Stream Clean; Adopted a highway to clean and upkeep local city road; adopted two highways as part of MoDOT (Missouri Department of Transportation). The volunteer program MoDOT can save 1M per year. A third adoption is in-progress.

Ashwin Patel