San Jose High Schooler Promotes Equity, Community Through Sports

A video of an athlete in Cameroon changed the life and aspirations of San Jose high school student Satvik Rao. Now Rao, through a sports nonprofit he founded, is changing the lives of Bay Area children.

Several months ago, when Rao watched Nkwain Kennedy dribble on a YouTube video in his makeshift gym, he marveled at Kennedy’s yet-to-be fulfilled dream to play in the National Basketball Association.

Then the 16-year-old Lynbrook High School senior thought of the disadvantaged children in his own environment.

“Many children don’t have the resources to pursue sports like someone in my position would,” he said. “I could see communities struggling over in Africa but didn’t think I could do anything to make a difference there.”

So, setting his sights on San Mateo and Santa Clara counties, he was inspired to help nearby youngsters from underserved communities play sports.

Rao, who has been playing basketball since he was 5, began fundraising with high school basketball teammates Ethan Shih, Owen Tsao and Vasisht Kartik, seeking donations for sports and school equipment. They purchased balls, jerseys, cones and paddles and backpacks stuffed with paper, pencils, erasers, math games and other school supplies.

“We’re offering them the ability to educate themselves effectively in the classroom while providing them the resources to partake in sports outside of it,” Rao said.

Fundraising is tough. He and his teammates reached out to four sports equipment manufacturers, and only B & G Sports came forward with $25.

But Business Entrepreneurship Encouragement Program, a Bay Area student-run incubator, provided a $1,000 grant.

The team offers basketball tutoring for $20 a session to support fundraising goals.

By mid-summer, Rao and his teammates raised $1,600 and began the process of establishing the nonprofit Jumpstart Sports Foundation.

Jumpstart Sports donated four boxes of equipment to LifeMoves, which provides interim housing and supportive services to homeless individuals and families in San Mateo and Santa Clara counties.

Claire Ebert, LifeMoves’ manager of children and family services, said Rao called her in May to offer help as she was gearing up for five summer camps and had created a list of needed arts, crafts and sports equipment. She said, “He gladly took the list and said ‘OK. We can do that.’ It’s awesome to see young people doing this.”

A few weeks later, Rao delivered four boxes of the desired merchandise to the organization’s site in San Jose.

“We are extremely grateful for his donations. It’s young people like him who are really allowing us to have a positive experience on our children and break the cycle of homelessness,” Ebert said.

Fred McCasland, regional director of the Boys & Girls Clubs of Silicon Valley , which serves 7,000 Bay Area children, reports that Jumpstart donated four boxes of sporting and school equipment to its center.

Rao said he thinks of his project all the time, as soon as he rises in the morning, and admits to thinking about it during his summer internship days. He desires to study business, a vision inspired by a hackathon he participated in during middle school.

“I love the idea of creating something new and having a product behind it,” he said.

Rao has not forgotten Africa: “South Sudan does not have a single basketball gym in the entire country,” he lamented.

Jumpstart Sports recently cemented an agreement with the Amani Foundation in Tanzania, which supports needy children suffering from brachial plexus injury, a condition affecting nerves in the spinal cord, shoulder, arm and hand.

“We’re donating $500 to them from the money we raised coaching (basketball) and they’ll use it to buy jerseys and other sports apparel from Tanzania internally that will specifically be used to jumpstart girls’ sports in that country,” Rao said.

Jumpstart is contacting childcare organizations in Nigeria, South Africa and Ireland, planning to provide sports equipment.

Rao, whose parents are immigrants from Bangalore, India, has long-term plans that keep expanding. In the distant future, he hopes to bring an Indian player to the U.S. to join the NBA.

In the meantime, Rao, who soon starts his senior year in high school and is applying to universities, said Jumpstart will survive and thrive without him. He said he instilled students in younger classes with the ideals of the project and is confident they will carry on.

This story was originally published on Local News Matters on August 7, 2024.

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