Meek's HOPE: A Small Part In Our Huge Responsibility For "The Education Debt"
From www.SwishAppeal.com:
In Rachel Whittaker's New Orleans Times-Picayune article yesterday about Phoenix Mercury point guard Temeka Johnson's new book Meek's Moments, Louisiana State University assistant coach Bob Starkey described the origins of his former player's foundation, Meek's HOPE (www.MeeksHope.org).
Former LSU women's basketball star Temeka Johnson debuts children's book | NOLA.com
Bob Starkey, one of Johnson's coaches on the LSU women's basketball team, recalled a day when she walked into his office as a sophomore and told him of her dream to start a foundation to help children.
Starkey said it was endeavors like this that cemented Johnson as a leader for the Lady Tigers.
"I've never heard of a college student thinking that far ahead," said Starkey, who joined Johnson in Phoenix for the weekend. "She thought about leadership 24 hours a day."
Although Starkey's description of her might make her seem like an extraordinary individual, it's worth noting that Johnson considers what she does as far more ordinary than the praise of her coach and the positive press she's attracting seems to indicate.
Giving back to people, as Johnson described in an interview with Swish Appeal prior to last Tuesday's 91-85 loss to the Seattle Storm, is something that has just always been a natural part of who she is, regardless of whether she was doing so under the auspices of an organization or simply being a compassionate human being.
"It was nothing spectacular -- not in my eyes it wasn't spectacular," said Johnson, while recalling the ways in which she gave back even before founding Meek's Hope in 2005. "It just seemed like the normal stuff, the normal things that people do: helping out kids that needed help and listening to people that needed to be talked to. It's always been something that I've done."
So in order to appreciate the work that Johnson is doing as part of Meek's Hope, it's important to understand that it's not just the result of an idealistic vision she's had since her sophomore year in college, but a natural extension of who she is and how she interacts with the world. The organization is just a way to formalize the ways in which she influences others, both directly and indirectly.
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