October 2012 Newsletter

October Newsletter

 

Fall 2012 has been an intense and busy time for us at the Donkor Tennis and Education Foundation. Our tennis clinics continue to be a major success in offering African children education and opportunities to play sports with the aid of volunteers.

 

With your ongoing support, we are able to continue our efforts reaching out to the children by running three tennis clinics. These clinics are taking place in Accra, Takoradi, and Kumasi. During each clinic, the participating children will have a chance to receive clothing, rackets, and tennis shoes. We would like to take a moment to thank all of our sponsors for your continued generosity. Without you, this wouldn’t be possible.

 

An extra-special thanks to the follow sponsors, who have gone so far beyond our hopes and expectations in order to bring tennis and education to the needy:

 

Paul and Sonia Jones

Terry and Frog White

Lisa O’Connor

Bjorn Nielsen

Tom O’Malley

 

Without your help, these three clinics wouldn’t be possible, nor would we be able to continue work on our tennis complex.

 

As a part of our ongoing efforts to streamline our organization and ensure that we can reach as many African children are able to receive education and an opportunity to play tennis, we would like to take a few moments to discuss the finances and business behind our organization. Despite our amazing and quick growth, we are still young. Without your ongoing support, we would not be able to help as many children as we have to date.

 

In 2010, through your support and financial aid, we were able to begin work on our own tennis facility. This is the land before construction began.

$19,000 was spent to purchase the property and do basic site development, which included clearing the land, purchasing sand and cement, paying hired labor, building the perimeter wall, constructing both the water supply and the electric supply and registering the land with the local government.

 

The first court, which has since been completed, cost $28,000 to build. This was higher than our initial estimation, as the court had to be raised and essentially rebuilt due to flooding hazards and how it was constructed. This setback has since been resolved, allowing us to continue with our plans to additional courts and the training facility.

 

The second court is currently under construction and we foresee having to invest approximately $15,000 to complete each additional court.

 

This is a picture of the first court prior to the surface being finished and painted.

first tennis court being built.

We would like to take a moment to thank the following individuals for their donations that were used specifically for the creation of these tennis courts:

 

Paul and Sonia Jones

Terry and Frog White

Bjorn Nielsen

 

As a part of our mission to ensure that you understand where your generous donations are going, we invite you to take a look at our financial statements that were given to the Florida Department of State’s Division of Commerce.

 

We currently have $17,000 in funds in our Ghana account. The remainder of our funds is in our US account for use for sponsoring tennis clinics, paying for the ongoing work at our facility, and travel expenses.

 

One of our current projects is an advertising campaign to local residents for sponsorship and donations to help expand our clinics and facility. We hope that by reaching out to the local community and reaching out to businesses and generous individuals, we can set up weekly clinics that will allow us to pursue long-term education of the children.

 

Thank you very much for your continued support of the Donkor Tennis and Education Foundation.

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