Editorial by Managing Director Alexander De Beir
And you, your good cause?
What’s fascinating about charity is how much it reminds us how profoundly human we remain in a world which wants to make us believe we could solve all problems via the digital way, with the only help of artificial intelligence.
Our ability to invest ourselves in good works does not only emphasize the need we sometimes feel to do something without immediate self-interest. It also often reveals something about our own story, our lives, how we got moved by people and tragedies amongst us or in our environment.
Seeing how 200 young professional adults and university students proudly representing 19 different charity works last month at the ADM Goodwill Hockey Cup made me reflect on how each team made its choice. Sometimes it is the disease of a family member or a friend, or an accident, the unfairness of life we feel the need to combat. For others, it is just by opening their eyes to some precarious circumstances people live in, people they don’t know but who they cross every morning while going to their job. For some of them, the need as a human to make a difference for others who did not have the same chances or assets remains paramount.
Children
What also struck me was the particular attention the teams addressed to the most fragile amongst us: the children. Although I do not want to forget all the other noble causes teams were playing for, which all deserve our utmost respect, it struck me that all of the 3 awarded teams were playing for children-related causes: #enfantsdumonde, #it4kids and #tada.network.
- The Belgian non-profit organisation Enfantsdumonde.be focuses on helping underprivileged children in developing countries. The association operates in 15 countries on 3 continents.
- IT4Kids invites generous contributors to donate their depreciated hardware to charity. The organisation donates the value of the hardware to the projects of charities they collaborate with, allowing donators to contribute to creating structural sports opportunities for children who wouldn’t otherwise have them due to financial or physical challenges.
- TADA asbl is a Brussels learning network that contributes to the emancipation of youngsters from socially disadvantaged backgrounds via weekend schooling and an alumni network. TADA motivates citizens and businesses to contribute to a more inclusive society. Join us to help TADA grow!
Sports and education, in Belgium and abroad, key elements in the development of our future generations! We at ADM are particularly proud to cooperate with these beautiful initiatives.
Impactful
But this would not happen without the enthusiasm and dynamism of all these hockey teams and the organising team and its members who strive to make the ADM Goodwill Cup each year more impactful. As you will read in the following interview with the team, these strong individual personalities manage to transform themselves into a powerful collective team, precisely the way the captains of the various hockey teams succeed in boosting their friends to create a unique common drive for the best. All want to have fun, to play their favourite sport, but above all, to be impactful.
Finally, what also makes me become particularly hopeful and optimistic for the future is their commitment as project leaders, as each ADM Goodwill Cup edition remains, not to rest on their laurels, but to try to find out how they can become even more impactful.
With these young impactful entrepreneurs, believe me, the future looks bright!
