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    The Newsroom Blog
    17 October 2017 | POSTED BY Janet Rae Saunders Pinson

    Latter-day Saint Basketball Player Practices Charity Off the Court

    Serving others provides unique perspective to the plight of others for New Zealand woman

    New Zealand native, Brooke Blair, senior guard for the Idaho State University women’s basketball team in the United States, spends her off season preparing physically for the coming year. Though spending many hours practicing shots, ball handling and conditioning, she leaves some precious time for something equally as important—and that is “giving back”.

    “I love helping and serving others; it just makes you feel so happy,” Brooke said.  “I just love to do anything that will help others.”

    This past summer, Brooke volunteered her time to Furniture for Schools Charitable Trust, a local charity in her home town of Auckland, New Zealand.

     
                                                               

    Co-trustees John McLean and Callum Blair, Brooke’s father, founded Furniture for Schools Charitable Trust with the goal of encouraging and enhancing education by improving and providing environments that are conducive to learning.

    “Many times when schools and universities get new furniture, the old goes straight to the dump,” said Brooke.   

    Furniture for Schools partnering with LDS Charities, (the humanitarian arm of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) work together to secure and ship the used furniture and books to the Pacific islands including Kiribati, Vanuatu, Fiji, Samoa and Tonga.

    Furniture is loaded onto trucks, then after cleaning is loaded into shipping containers headed for the Pacific Islands.      

    Although the work is laborious and sometimes takes the place of her daily workouts, Brooke has gained an invaluable perspective on the plight of those who are not as fortunate.  “It makes me happy for them . . . we need to appreciate the little things that we take for granted, like having a chair to sit in and a desk to write on.  It’s a cool thing Furniture for Schools is doing.”

                

    More and more schools are starting to contact the Charitable Trust which has been operating for 2 ½ years.  It is a win-win for the donating schools, the environment and for the children of the Pacific. 

    Watch a short video about Serving Others:

                                          

    Read more about The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

    Learn more about Latter-day Saints Humanitarian efforts:

                                   

    Read Older Post Mormon Missionaries Support School Children in the South Pacific Read Newer Post 30,000 Followers 'LIKE' Pacific Mormon Newsroom Facebook Page

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