Challenge: Channel your  passion to help underprivileged

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By Daryn Kagan, Contributing writer Updated 1:32 PM Saturday, November 12, 2011

Gabe Whaley has a feeling about you.

He has a feeling you have some passion or love burning inside of you, and he has a whole new take on how you can channel that .

It’s amazing, really, that he has such insight. The kid’s only a junior in college.

But Gabe has lived a lot in his young life. He thinks about hunger a lot, hunger that can show up in all different forms. He remembers being 10 years old and hungry to play soccer. Problem was, funds were tight for his family.

“My dad had recently gotten out of the army,” Gabe recalls. “So it was a difficult situation where they were busy trying to save money to build a house and send us to school and take care of us.”

Yet, there was that hunger. Gabe knew he had to find way to go to a local soccer camp his friends were attending.

“I had to scrounge around. We found some of my dad’s old tube socks, we found a pretty inexpensive pair of soccer cleats for me, and the camp ended up being like $40 so my parents were able to allow that to happen.”

That was probably the best $40 his folks ever spent. A love affair was born. Gabe and soccer — a match made in heaven. Turns out the kid was pretty good, too. That 10-year-old kid grew up to play for West Point.

All along the way, Gabe told me he never forgot about that love or about that hunger to play.

“In 2006, just before my junior year in high school, I decided I’m going to run my own soccer camp, just like the camp that made me fall in love with this game.”

Gabe knew his camp would be different. “I decided instead of charging money for it, it’s going to be free.”

Then like a soccer ball to the head, he was hit with an even more inspired idea.

“Instead making it completely free, we would offer the opportunity to make a donation of canned goods or nonperishable food items in return for the soccer experience.”

How brilliant is that? Feed a kid’s hunger to play and feed a hungry community all at the same time.

“It also kind of adds an air of legitimacy to what we were doing because people tend to respect things more when there is an exchange involved.”

That first clinic four years ago looked like a raging success: 70 kids; 1,200 canned goods.

He put on that clinic, by the way, with no money in his pocket. He got a local soccer club to donate equipment, a buddy designed a website. This is not a young man who listens to the tape in his head, “I can’t make a difference because I don’t have any money.”

That one clinic has grown into a nonprofit called Kicking for Hunger.

“To this date, we’ve raised over 17,000 pounds of food. We reached out to over 1,200 children,” Gabe shared with me proudly.

The idea is taking hold. Turns out there are a lot of hungry people out there. Hungry to make a difference.

He’s hearing from all sorts of people who want to put on soccer clinics and raise food donations.

Apparently, it’s only the appetizer.

Gabe sees no reason why the formula needs to be limited to his beloved game.

“We want people to harness something that they’re passionate about and spread it so that they can fight some social ill in their community.”

Are you one of those people hungry to make a difference? If so, a driven 20-something young man is serving up a challenge, “If you’re passionate about something, why not share it and use it to create good for those around you?”

Think you have the ingredients to take the challenge? Gabe Whaley would get a kick out of hearing from you at Kicking4Hunger.org.

Daryn Kagan is the creator of DarynKagan.com. She is the author of “What’s Possible! 50 True Stories of People Who Dared to Dream They Could Make a Difference.”

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