Each year the number of children we help is growing, our charitable activities are getting bigger and we realize how much impact we have, however, we’re struggling with tennis courts availability . We rent tennis courts in a private tennis club which makes it challenging for us to continue running our programs due to rental cost and court availability. We judged convenient to have our own training facility in order for us to afford running our programs and helping more children.
Our biggest projects over the last few years is the construction of a tennis and education center for orphans and helpless children. The project will be located in Ivory Coast. This initiative began two years ago and our goal is to build a training center where children can receive proper tennis training and education in better conditions .The center will host and serve over 100 children each year.
Our goal is to make this center a resource for underprivileged children in West Africa. We are open to working with private donors, companies entities and other organizations who can support us. Currently, we’re trying to buy a land in the city of Jacqueville to build our center. We would like our center to have all the amenities found in the tennis training centers in US and Europe like sports facilities, school buildings, dorm rooms, medical centers with diverse programs such as tennis and educational programs, tournaments, healthcare, emergency services and seasonal projects.
Our pilot project is now underway with the construction on a nearly seven acres sport infrastructure in Jacqueville in the southwest Ivory Coast. After all the funds needed have been obtained for the center’s construction, BTT Tennis Foundation also has plans to build a youth hostel on the same piece of land and host more young athletes from every part of western Africa. Here they can train and compete because in the near future we plan to host and run tournaments as well.
The immediate beneficiaries of this project include the center’s children and more than 500 poor children. We hope to develop this project in different regions of the Ivory Coast in future years and in other West African countries.
After a few months into the Foundation’s work, our board members and volunteers prepared and organized the work we put into the foundation’s activities. They work shifted into caring for the children’s critical needs to help them get back on track. As the work intensified, they were amazed by the support of the community.
In the years ever since, we started our training events and donations, the children consider themselves family members . Through these donations, we could observe the impact on the children’s faces. We then realized the impact we have on their lives, giving these kids the opportunity to do what they love in better conditions, to live their passion. This is why The BTT Tennis Foundation is here and will continue to be.
