In the early morning of August 24, Yao returned from Africa and arrived in Leshan at 3 am. But after sleeping for several hours, Yao Ming dragged her tired body to the basketball court of Leshan Normal University. The strong African sunshine left its mark on Yao Ming's sideburns. You can see that Yao Ming's sideburns left two white lines because of wearing glasses. To outsiders, perhaps Yao Ming only appeared as an image in the activities of Yao Fund, but this time, from Africa to Leshan, everyone saw Yao Ming's efforts. Yao Ming said: "It's not just me who do charity activities, but my family has also paid a lot for it. I came here in February to communicate, coordinate and evaluate the feasibility of the activity. "
This big man who made countless people appreciate the charm of basketball also made countless people feel his warmth and carefulness.
Close contact with endangered animals in Africa
The first stop of Yao Ming's trip to Africa is warm and wild Kenya. Starting from Opejeta National Park, Yao Ming began his wildlife conservation tour. O 'Pejeta Nature Reserve is a private non-profit wildlife reserve, covering an area of 90,000 acres, where a large number of wild animals live, and it is also the largest black rhinoceros reserve in East Africa. Although wild rescue organizations had many ambassadors in China before, Yao Ming was the first China celebrity to visit African poaching sites and call for the protection of wildlife. "I saw Jinna and Suni, two northern white rhinos. At present, there are only seven northern white rhinos left in the world, which are extremely endangered species in the world. "
At the elephant observation camp in Samburu National Reserve, Yao Ming stood next to the remains of an elephant killed by poaching, which shocked him and made him pay more attention to the elephants here. Recently, a photo circulated on the Internet-Yao Ming bent down and stared at the elephant, and the elephant leaned meekly beside Yao Ming. The scene is extremely warm and touching. "In fact, there are 22 elephants there, and the baby elephant has just been rescued and just stayed in the reserve for 10 days. We visited the elephant orphanage. The elephant community is made up of females and a group of young elephants. All we see are young elephants that have lost their leading position, and some females will be killed. They received a phone call in the wild and all the elephants they found were sent here. Raise them in this place until they are 2 to 3 years old and then send them to the wild. "
In Africa, Yao Ming took great pains to protect wild animals, which also touched the local people. During the trip, Yao Ming met local Samburu fighters. They gave Yao Ming an 8-foot-long spear, invited Yao Ming to dress up as a Samburu warrior, and gave him a resounding name: Lenasakalai, a legendary warrior who once protected the Samburu people. "My mind seems to flash thousands of stars and a vast galaxy. They took me back in time with hypnotic whispers. It was not until a samurai's cell phone suddenly rang that I was reminded that what I saw in front of me was the interweaving of history and reality. " In the diary of his trip to Africa, Yao Ming recorded the scene of Samburu warriors singing and dancing beside him.
Yao Ming's enthusiasm for protecting endangered wildlife in distant African land and his close contact with African land also deeply moved him. "In Africa, standing in the endless grassland or desert makes me feel very small. Many things happened in China have directly affected the lives of Africans. Both our investment in China and our consumption in China have touched some things that happened there, so if there is an opportunity, we should go and see more. "
As a matter of fact, as early as 2006, Yao Ming has started a public welfare action to protect wild animals. As a goodwill ambassador for wildlife protection, Yao Ming solemnly promised to refuse to eat shark fin. He also used his appeal to influence people around him and the whole society. In China sports, after Yao Ming, Li Ning, Kong, Lou Yun, Zhang Yining and Guo Jingjing also served as the image ambassadors of the International wildaid Association. Among them, it can't be said that there is no initiative and courage of Yao Ming. The slogan "No business, no killing" is also known by thousands of people through Yao Ming's mouth.
Yao Fund hopes that primary schools will continue their basketball dream.
On the evening of August 24th, "Happy Summer, Open New Hope", Yao Fund hoped that the primary school basketball season party would be staged in the basketball hall of Leshan Normal University. Yao Ming personally invited 27 children who celebrated their birthdays in August to the stage, and asked everyone on the scene to sing birthday songs for these children. Caron butler, an NBA star who came to help out, also performed fancy basketball for the children. At the end of the party, Yao Ming said to the children, "What I want to say is very simple. I saw on the message board today that the students who are teaching may have written: We hope you are happy. I believe this sentence can represent the expectations of all our teaching teachers and our staff. We look forward to your happiness and hope that everyone will be happy. " On the morning of August 25th, Yao Ming, as the assistant coach of Sunshine League and Happy League, sat on the bench with Butler. He stood on the sidelines for 40 minutes in the first half and the second half. Happiness is also the theme pursued by this "Yao Fund Hope Primary School Basketball Season". "A total of 45 schools participated in this activity. Each team has 8 children and 3 coaches. The purpose of this activity is not to train athletes, but to highlight education, and physical exercise is a part of education. As you can see, the children are very happy on the court. Our aim is to make them feel happy through exercise. "
Yao Ming Love Fund announced the launch of "20 12 Yao Fund Hope Primary School Basketball Season" on April 9th this year. The activity is a youth sports public welfare project, which consists of three parts: the principal forum, the basketball lesson plan and the basketball competition.
The "Principal Forum" aims to let school principals know the significance and importance of physical education to children's physical and mental development, and lay a foundation for schools to pay more attention to physical education and children's physical and mental health in the future. The "Basketball Teaching Plan" is mainly to recruit and cultivate college students in physical education colleges and provide teachers and students with continuous training and guidance in sports and basketball skills. "Yao Fund Hope Primary School Basketball Match" allows children to show their training skills and feel the sportsmanship of teamwork and active competition. Basketball competition is divided into East-West Competition and Exhibition Competition, and a small "NBA" is held for the children of Hope Primary School. Paying attention to children's physical and mental development has become a new stage for rural children to gain self-confidence and demonstrate their abilities, and has really become the "basketball season" for children. This activity involves 47 Hope primary schools and nearly 27,000 children, and will cost about 3.5 million yuan.
"I love basketball and benefit from it. I hope to help those lovely children through basketball." Yao Ming said.
Adhere to the road of public welfare and decide the future.
Open the little giant's charity report card Surprisingly, as the first basketball player, Yao Ming's charity has been going on silently for more than ten years.
During the period of SARS in May 2003, Yao Ming made a special trip back to China and launched a large-scale activity of sports stars donating money to fight SARS in Shanghai. Since then, Yao Ming has served as the image ambassador of the Special Olympics, joined the ranks of volunteers who donated hematopoietic stem cells to the Chinese Bone Marrow Bank, served as the goodwill ambassador of the wildaid Association, called for the protection of wild animals, led many NBA stars to participate in an activity called "Join hands with children and adolescents to fight AIDS", and launched the "Yao Na Kindness Tour" with Nash * * *, raising 6.5438+0.7 million yuan, all of which were used to fund the construction of Hope Primary School in poverty-stricken areas in the west.
After the Wenchuan earthquake in 2008, Yao Ming donated160,000 yuan. Subsequently, Yao Ming established the "Yao Ming Love Fund" and continued to add 2 million dollars to help the people in the disaster areas rebuild their homes. In the past four years, "Yao Fund" has built 14 schools, including 7 Hope primary schools in Sichuan, 2 schools in Yunnan, and 1 schools in Qinghai, Guizhou, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region and Shandong Province, and a special care school was donated by Gansu Province. Four Hope Primary Schools in Sichuan Province, Youfu School in Gansu Province and two Hope Primary Schools in Yunnan Province have all been completed and put into use. More than 9,000 teenagers are studying and growing up in Yao Fund Hope Primary School.
In this basketball season, Yao Ming's Shanghai Men's Basketball Team and Sichuan Jinqiang Basketball Team also joined this charity activity. Talking about CBA teams paying more and more attention to public welfare activities, Yao Ming said frankly that this is a sense of social responsibility and a way for the team to give back to the fans.
It is different from many NBA players participating in charity activities and club activities. In the past, CBA leagues and teams paid insufficient attention to this aspect, but with the concern of public welfare undertakings, many teams began to pay attention to this issue. Since Yao Ming took over the Shanghai Men's Basketball Team, during the non-league period, the team will participate in more community activities and interact with ordinary fans. "This is a question of social responsibility. We have joined a lot of community service in the operation of Shanghai basketball team. Besides playing well, our team is racking their brains every day to think about how the team can serve the fans more and get closer to them. Our players have all grown up from the community, including myself, so we should thank the supporters in the community for supporting us step by step. "
In recent years, CBA league has paid more attention to the development of public welfare undertakings. Compared with NBA, we have a gap. The development time of the two organizations is there. CBA is less than 20 years old, while NBA is corporate culture. CBA is still greatly influenced by the national team, and its clients are relatively limited. Now, more and more people advocate corporate responsibility. The NBA is a seamless connection and an enterprise in itself. CBA is not completely divorced from its origin. Although we can't decide our origins, we can decide our future. "Yao Ming said.