Sport United States Project #26774

Advancing education and opportunity through Rugby

by The ATLAS Foundation

Project Report | Oct 30, 2019
Successful Visit to UK

By Rory Hamilton | Marketing & Communications Officer

The work of Atlas in the US has been a great success, so much so that we will shortly be starting a US office. We will let you all know about this as it develops.

The project we fund in Memphis is going from strength to strength and expanding beyond its original school to more communities. The original players in the programme are now graduates and giving back to others in their communities.

Back in early September we hosted Shane Young and Calvin Gentry of Memphis Inner City Rugby! A big thanks to all at Harlequins Foundation for helping host the boys, allowing Calvin to train with the Harlequins 1st XV, meeting his idols in the process and making Calvin feel like part of the first team - all the players were top class and took to him immediately. An experience he'll surely never forget!

It was inspiration to hear them speak about the work they've done with MICR and how it has helped people like Calvin. Even Jonny Wilkinson couldn't captivate a room the way they did! Shane so brilliantly put it to the room that the work Atlas Foundation does is invaluable and many projects wouldn't be able to continue without our help - you can help support this by joining Front Row Club Rugby: "Everyone in this room can afford to join for only £10 a year and you should all sign up straight away!"

Thanks also should go to Tristan Aylward from Ram Rugby for helping look after the guys and taking them down to Haywards Heath RFC to show them what English grassroots rugby looks like! They certainly found it different and quite the experience!

In other news, our first official Atlas USA fundraiser was postponed until February so we could coincide better with our representatives being in New York and Memphis. It looks set to be an exciting year for Atlas in the US!

Back to all project reports

About Project Reports

Project reports on GlobalGiving are posted directly to globalgiving.org by Project Leaders as they are completed, generally every 3-4 months. To protect the integrity of these documents, GlobalGiving does not alter them; therefore you may find some language or formatting issues.

If you donate to this project or have donated to this project, you can receive an email when this project posts a report. You can also subscribe for reports without donating.