NCAA gets grant for
kid’s program
By Laura Pelner
Summer
Reporter
The NCAA Foundation will receive a two-year $1.5
million grant from Lilly Endowment Inc. to support a new youth program
called Common Ground.
The program will bring together 50,000 young folks
in grades 3-8 from central Indiana, said Marion Peavey, the executive
director of the NCAA Foundation.
Peavey said "We’re starting in the city
and branching out to surrounding communities and school districts. We’ll
expand this program throughout the state of Indiana, and are looking at
going nationwide."
The Common Ground program’s goal is to focus
on having young people learn good citizenship habits and behaviors through
sports. "We’re really looking at learning good teamwork and
how to prepare to work as a team, how to organize and how to show respect,"
said Peavey.
Lilly Endowment Inc. is providing the NCAA foundation
with $1.5 million to help the Common Ground program. Gretchen Wolfrm,
the communications director at Lilly Endowment, explained that one of
the Endowment’s major areas of grant making is youth programming.
Wolfrm said because of this, working with the NCAA
Foundation on this project seemed to fit like a glove.
The NCAA foundation was happy to receive the grant.
"We’re delighted. It’s one of the largest gifts ever to
the NCAA Foundation," said Peavey.
He said the grant gives the Foundation an opportunity
to accelerate the Common Ground program.
The program will be developed through the NCAA Foundation
and will be entering the school systems in the fall. Peavey said "We’ll
start with a series of sessions with individual students with a curriculum
and a syllabus. We’ll have materials provided for them to read and
review; we’ll have the teachers involved and a variety of student
athletes."
Accordingly Peavey said student athletes will be
doing presentations for the Common Ground participants from time to time.
He said "Those people (the student athletes) are role models for
the young people."
Peavey added there will be student athletes from
Purdue involved as the program progresses.
Peavey stressed that the program is not only about
sports though. He said participants will learn how to work with a team,
how to have good organization standards, how to respect others and about
the importance of honesty and hard work.
"All of those kinds of things one can learn
whether they are an athlete or not," Peavey said.
Wolfrm hopes the Common Ground program is successful.
She said, "It’s a top of the line group. The NCAA programs have
great attraction for young people and this program has a good prognosis
for success."
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