When Sarah Gorden, professional soccer player for the Chicago Red Stars, issued the Pass It On Challenge to her teammates to raise money for a local mental health organization, Get Yo Mind Right Chi, she did not expect for it to result in nearly 16,000 dollars in donations, over $9,000 of which came from supporters. The challenge, which started with a pledge from Gorden herself, was a creative way for her to continue to enact change in her community, even though she was away in Utah playing in the NWSL Challenge Cup.
Impressive as the results are, the Pass It On Challenge is only a small part of what Gorden has set out to do this year. Prior to the Challenge Cup, Gorden posted to Instagram and Twitter, offering Black girls the opportunity to train with her. This was an initial step intended to make headway toward her objective of closing “the gap between women’s soccer and the Black community.” After returning home from Utah, she continued working on the best way to make this dream a reality.
While Gorden originally concentrated on bringing more Black girls into soccer, she realized that these girls also needed resources to help them process their emotions and heal from trauma. Rather than choose to address only one problem, the lack of Black women in soccer or lack of resources available to young Black girls, she chose to get creative. Gorden generated the idea to combine these two things and created HoodSpace, an innovative nonprofit designed to “help girls of color find their space of flow through yoga, meditation and sport.” This organization, which launched in September, is based on Gorden’s own experience with yoga and meditation and how they have helped her deal with the trauma of systemic racism as well as improve her game. Gorden knows that having access to these outlets that has helped her immensely, which motivates her to provide the same resources to people who otherwise would not have them.
I believe that Gorden fits the five parts of Sternberg and Lubart’s Investment Theory of Creativity which aims to tie the facets of creativity together. Her personality fits the theory since, as mentioned above, she was able to enact change even when she faced the obstacle of being isolated in a completely different state, and she has demonstrated intellectual skill with the ability to decide what ideas are good and develop them into something meaningful. Her nonprofit HoodSpace is the best example of this; it is a unique combination of her talents as a soccer player and her knowledge of the benefits of mental health resources; this is her domain experience. The nonprofit is also the result of both her internal passion for equality as well as her desire to “’have some sort of impact somewhere,’” which is her motivation. HoodSpace is still in its early stages, but already, this inventive nonprofit and Gorden have already gotten a lot of support from the soccer community, her environment, including teammates’ advice and even t-shirts whose profits go to the organization.
I think this is really interesting and a great initiative especially in the era of BLM. This is truly inspiring because the creativity came not out of necessity but as a result of experience. Many people think creatively as a result of constraints and limitations but for Sarah, it came from an urge to help others and create a space that would have benefitted her in her own childhood.
ReplyDeleteI love how you choose a charity organization as a creative offspring of an athlete. This is such an inspiring and heartwarming story. I love that she is able to acknowledge that while it was hard for her to handle her mental health, it is even harder for someone of color. This was a brilliant idea and fruition of Sarah Gorden. Also, it was interesting to see her creative process and progression towards the final goal of "Hood Space".
ReplyDeleteThank you for sharing, this was very interesting to read about. I am a big soccer fan myself, but i never knew this about Gorden. I really like how you tied into the investment theory of creativity. It's always great to see professional athletes giving back to their communites, especially something so personal to their own lives.
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