To enhance the student-experience, magnify the education-career link and help foster the “winner’s mentality,” the Goals For Life team (along with the resources of the NFL Player’s Association) creates, conducts and collaborates with the community to provide special events and field trip opportunities for all students involved in the program.
They include the following:
1) Annual Super Bowl Party — For the past nine years Goals For Life has sponsored the largest free super bowl party for kids at the local AMC theater. Each year over nine hundred neighborhood children participate in the festivities. There is food, beverages, sports memorabilia souvenirs, entertainment, an anti-drug presentation, former football players signing autographs and the opportunity to view the football game on the big screen.
2) “Champions” Awards Banquet — At the end of each year a culminating luncheon is held to recognize and celebrate the achievements of the Goals For Life student participants.
3) Motivational Assemblies — Three to six Goals For Life athletes will address hundreds of students in a school auditorium in effort to motivate them in their studies, encourage them to refrain from elicit drug use, and to get them to take responsibility for their behavior.
4) Guest Speakers — Sport superstars periodically visit the Goals For Life sessions to meet and share life experiences with student participants.
5) Field Trips — Goals For Life generally arranges three field trips during the year.
a) “The Ole College Try” the students are taken to one of the local universities, University of Southern California, University of California at Irvine, California State University at Long Beach, California State University at Fullerton or University of California Los Angeles.
The purpose of this trip is to spark a vision and give opportunity for the participants to experience being in a university environment and hopefully allow them to understand that attending college is a realistic and accessible goal.
b) “Out of Bounds: Justice Revealed” the students go to either the Los Angeles Criminal Court, Santa Ana Court, or a California Youth Authority facility in effort to discourage students from choosing a life of crime.
In 2008, GFL students and mentors visited the Vision Program at the Norco Prison in Chino, CA.
c) “Outstretched Hands” is a field trip to the Union Rescue Mission. Here the students experience the heart rendering reality of abject poverty and have a chance to work in the kitchen and serve the hungry.
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