Impact
Jack Newman - Donor of the Month
Coach Jack Newman thinks large at a prestigious tennis academy in Austin, Texas to develop his students on and off the courts into citizens of significance. Newman, head coach and CEO of the Austin Tennis Academy (ATA), leads to change his students and change the world.
Jack's goal to develop citizens of significance is what brought ATA to A Glimmer of Hope’s front door four years ago, and today this partnership is making it happen. When parents send their children to ATA, they expect it to make them stronger athletes, but with Jack as their head coach they become stronger young men and women both in body and mind – by learning to care for those in extreme need.
Over the past four years, ATA has raised more than $350,000 to build 28 water projects (including a clean-water reservoir supplying over 10,000 people) and two schools in rural Ethiopia. In 2008 alone, the Playing for Glimmer campaign raised over $150,000. They are dreaming large; ATA’s coaches and students have set their goal to raise one million dollars over the next 15 years.
Through example, Coach Newman continues to lead his students to care about others in need and give back. Long before Jack brought ATA to the table as a Glimmer of Hope donor, he became a supporter of Glimmer by personally funding several water projects in Ethiopia. Donna Berber, founder of A Glimmer of Hope, was the initial catalyst for the powerhouse ATA-Glimmer partnership; Donna first introduced Jack to Glimmer when her eldest son enrolled in the tennis academy. Donna then invited Jack to join her and her husband Philip on a trip to Ethiopia to see some of Glimmer’s projects. The trip had a transformative effect on Newman, and then, in typical Newman style, he took it to the next level and invited his students, parents and coaches to join the cause.
After the highly successful 2008 ATA campaign, Coach Newman was able to return to Ethiopia this time with his students to see two of the schools and some of the water projects they had funded. The second trip fueled Coach Newman’s conviction to do more, and sparked the conviction that future ATA students needed to visit Ethiopia and become torchbearers of the cause.
The transformative power of visiting Ethiopia once again proved true this summer when Coach Newman’s student Breck Spencer and his father went to northern Ethiopia with Glimmer staff members. They went to view some of the ATA completed projects and experience the need of the people. To experience what the local women and children do each day to collect water in one rural village, Breck carried a jerrycan down a mountainside to collect water from the spring fed water source. After the 25-minute trek down the slope, Breck filled the jerrycan with some 40 pounds of water. He then had to carry it on his back up the steep incline, taking a full 43 minutes to ascend, alongside the women and young girls. The painful process of carrying a heavy burden on his back and the steep climb back to the village impacted Breck. When Breck returned to Austin, Coach Newman wrote to him and asked, “What now?”
With that prompting, Breck answered with action and formed a water walk for his fellow players called the ATA “Water Walk for Life”. On September 1 at 5 p.m. the ATA students and coaches will fill jerrycans to carry up into the grueling hills of Spanish Oaks from the creek behind ATA. Each student will have the goal of getting at least 10 sponsors to donate to ATA’s 2010 Playing for Glimmer campaign. The funds will help build a health clinic in a rural village Breck visited on his trip to Ethiopia. The health clinic will be located next to the Wuhdet Primary School made possible by the 2008 ATA campaign.
Jack Newman’s powerful vision for producing citizens of significance continues to change young men and women like Breck and the lives of some of the poorest in the world. Moving forward, we can only imagine the domino effect of all these potential new leaders with a heart of compassion and empathy for the poor.
“Breck is just one young man, but he will be influencing his peers through this passion for the water walk,” Newman said. “Who knows, one of these young men or women may some day become the President of the United States.”
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