Gary Player - The Legend

Gary Player Adopts Plesant City School in Palm Beach as a Beneficiary of the Player Foundation

Feb 23, 2005 | Filed Under: The Player Foundation   

The Gary Player Foundation is proud to announce the adoption of Pleasant City Elementary School in West Palm Beach, Florida.  This relationship entails that, through its charitable events around the world, The Player Foundation will support the school by providing funding, educational material as well as day-to-day necessities for the children.

“One of the biggest concerns facing the world is education and it is so important that we address this problem.  Harvard and Princeton are great universities, aren’t they?  But that’s not where the problem lies.  We must start at the beginning of our children’s lives because these are the critical years,” Player told the Palm Beach media when he visited the school on February 21st.

“Education is the light and every child deserves a chance for a bright future.”

Player further added that he is so proud to be working with such a remarkable woman as Principal Andrea Peppers.  “What she has achieved with this school makes her a saint in my eyes,” the Black Knight stated.

For the last two years, the Gary Player Foundation has been looking to partner with an American-based school for underprivileged children that would essentially become the ‘sister’ to Blair Atholl School, which is located in the surrounding rural area of Johannesburg, South Africa.  Little did Player know that an elementary school, with parallel needs and problems as that of Blair Atholl, existed on the doorstep of Palm Beach, just a few miles from the Gary Player Group headquarters.

Twenty years ago, Gary Player founded and established the Blair Atholl School near his home outside Johannesburg, South Africa for one good reason - there was a dire need for it.  People in this area were living below the bread line, medical care was practically nonexistent, and most importantly, children had nowhere to go to receive a wholesome meal and basic education.  Across the Atlantic, these same conditions exist at Pleasant City Elementary School in West Palm Beach.  The new partnership will serve as a model for establishing and/or supporting schools in other parts of the world like Europe and Asia.  What began as a small vision to educate a handful of children near Mr Player’s estate in South Africa has now grown to support underprivileged children on a global scale.

About Pleasant City:

Pleasant City is the oldest African American community in the city of West Palm Beach and Palm Beach County, settled in 1900 by families who came to the area to extend the Florida East Coast Railroad.  Once a beautiful single-family home neighborhood, with a deep devotion to family, business and society, Pleasant City has now become a depressed, drug-infested community with a stigma of crime and low self esteem that nobody wishes to identify with.

In order to reunite and refurbish the community, Pleasant City Elementary was built three years ago.  Under the leadership of a remarkable Principal, Andrea Peppers, the school provides each child with a quality education, a 24-hour safe haven, guidance and most importantly, love.  Children attend classes in their neighborhood for the first time since 1965.  Prior to this, students from this community had to board buses to go to 14 different schools, further breaking up the neighborhood and spreading its children throughout the city.

The Gary Player Foundation is a registered non-profit 501 (c) 3 organization.  For further information, contact .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address), The Player Foundation, USA.

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