Now This is a Celebration People Can Get Behind

By: Martha | January 9th, 2008

A-Star, bitches! Forget the Robot, forget that thumb-sucking idiocy: Here’s a celebration that actually means something (by which I mean, something more than “My boys can swim! I made a baby!”). A group of Premiership players including Micah Richards, Marcus Bent and Titus Bramble (Who ever imagined we’d see his goal celebration?) have been celebrating their goals by making an “A” with their hands; while it doesn’t look particularly cool, the project the symbol references — an initiative called A-Star — is the sort of altruistic program that makes you wonder if maybe, just maybe, all footballers aren’t selfish sleazebags.

A-Star — shorthand for “every child is a star” — was founded by Fitz Hall, Andy Johnson, Ken Bonsu and Ronnie Wilson with the goal of “encouraging young people to express themselves in a positive manner and to make it possible to be around role models who do not glamorize crime, guns or drugs.” Nice and easy, right?

In practical terms, what the organization will do when it formally launches this summer is to provide healthy environments and role models for kids, primarily through team sports (read: football) and tournaments, wherein the participants will learn to value themselves and their abilities, as well as the benefits of being on a team and working effectively with others. The goals, obviously, are lofty and probably a bit naive, but the program’s founders hope its presence in the lives of participants will be long-term, and that it will provide an important alternative to other, less productive paths.

Young footballers thinking about people other than themselves, and working to improve the world in which they live is a wonderful, admirable thing and, frankly, is almost shocking given the content of most of what we read about the off-pitch lives of players these days. And by representing A-Star on the pitch, the players involved in the program are expressing pride in their project, something that will go a long way toward making it important to the kids they’re targeting. (A-Star could, however, really use a good web designer, if anyone’s interested.)

[via Lem]