The Curry’s are on a mission to help kids in the Bay Area reach their full potential.
On Thursday, Stephen and Ayesha enthusiastically introduced their new foundation Eat. Learn. Play. . In an event at Lakeside Park before a crowd of nearly 1,000 kids from Oakland Parks Recreation and Youth Development Town Camp, the couple expressed their vision and plans to bring a nourishing environment to help underprivileged children.
“Over the past 18 months or two years, we’ve really thought about what we want our own foundation to look like, what we want to stand behind,” Stephen said. “About how we can best make an impact.” The Curry’s kicked off their foundation with an announcement and a days full of fun events centered around children in Oakland. The Currys are committed to making an annual seven-figure donation to the foundation that will cover all administrative expenses, so that other money raised will go entirely into the programs.
The couple want to make an impact in the worlds they care most about. Stephen is one of the most well-known basketball players on the planet; Ayesha has a thriving culinary career and has, simultaneously, worked for years on childhood hunger issues. Raising healthy children is a priority for the parents of Riley, who turns 7 this week, Ryan, 4, and Canon, 1. “We wanted to be involved in something that stems from our passions, that comes from that place of passion,” Ayesha said. “We were not thinking about what this does for our legacy, but about how to have a direct impact. How to help out the community.”
Statistics from No Kid Hungry show only 56.2 percent of eligible students access breakfast programs, and only 18.3 percent use summer meal programs. One of the main focuses of the foundation is to address food insecurities among children while also creating programs addressing lack of education and language barriers. Nicholas Williams, the director of Oakland Parks and Recreation, expects the programs to impact more than 4,000 kids, most of whom come from low-income households and live below the poverty line.
The Curry family are doing amazing work. You can also amplify the credit with the core of the project being accomplished in the Oakland area, while the Warriors transition to their new home in San Francisco.
Flip the page for the sights and sounds from the Curry’s big announcement. Ayesha enlisted the help of kids to dunk Steph in a pool of water for free Under Armour sneakers