It’s a common thing for teams now a days to work outside of the field and in the community, using their name and connections for a greater good, but Santos Laguna in Liga MX has been doing that for a while.
The team holds events for special needs groups everywhere it travels, and according to a team representative, just broke out into the USA market in 2015 when it traveled for friendlies and a Campeon de Campeon game against Club America.
When Santos played in Tijuana on Friday, it arrived to town a day prior and held an awareness event for a local Tijuana orphanage which was damaged so badly in recent flooding, the government shut them down and said they can’t reopen until everything is fixed. The list given and estimates say that amount totals 50,000 dollars, and for a place operating only on donations of cash and supplies, that’s a steep hill to climb.
One of the team’s sponsors is Aeromexico, and both organizations came together in Tijuana to hold a special event for the kids and invited fans to come get autographs from players Diego de Buen (who used to play for Xolos), Cesar Ibañez, and Jorge Villafaña, but the catch was that fans had to bring supplies for the orphanage or donate money to be able to enter. When all was said and done, Santos collected a heap of good for the kids and some even walked away with special gifts from the airline.
Here’s copy with more detail from a club press release:
City of Angels has been in existence since the early 2000’s and strives to meet the needs of kids who come from extreme poverty who would otherwise be out on the streets. The orphanage receives no federal funding and operates strictly on monetary and supply donations from the public.
“The damage sustained to our home is about 50,000 dollars,” said a representative (from the orphanage at City of Angels). “We have to keep the kids in another orphanage about an hour south of here until we can raise the money to fix everything, so with this help from Santos and Aeromexico, we can work toward our goal. Being able to play with the players and have an evening like this was a beautiful thing for the kids.”
Jorge Villafaña works with Santos’ charitable program in Tijuana.
