This weekend student-athletes came to an information meeting about Generation U and starting their journey of saving lives and bringing water to people in Uganda. New faces came to see if this is a journey they wanted to take on. At the same time, others are looking forward to their second or third trip.
Fifteen high school student-athletes attended an informational meeting to learn how they can help raise 20 thousand dollars to build a water well in Uganda. While money is raised, the athletes will do speaking engagements with businesses and leaders in the Steamboat Springs community. They will visit a water treatment plant to learn the ins and outs of water safety and how public water supplies are treated.
In addition, the students will embark on their February Blues Break trip. That trip will be 10 days, four for travel and six with feet on the ground actively working in communities that are getting wells, as well as reuniting with communities that already have one.
Tanner Cobb has been to Uganda twice and is looking forward to reuniting with all the kids he’s met and helping out villages.
Oliver Straessle went to Uganda last year. He said people in Steamboat Springs have pretty much everything, and it’s at the tip of our fingers, but we’re grouchy or depressed.
“But there’s people carrying; I don’t know how heavy cornmeal on the back of their neck,” Straessle said. “But they seem like they are having the times of their lives.”
Carlos Rosaldo-Islas said he wanted to join Generation U because he has not had an experience where he gets to see other perspectives.
“I’ve not been handed everything to me but almost everything. I feel like I just need that reality check,” Rosaldo-Islas said. “Sometimes I realize how ungrateful I can be towards my parents, and I want to change that, and I can’t just change in a day. So I want to experience this.”
Joel Cobb said the cool thing about the program is that “we get to sharpen each other, and people get to invest in you.”
“You’re a conduit to keep that continuity going to help people across the world. To give them life, to give them water, to give them hope,” Cobb said. “That’s a really brilliant art piece of this whole thing. It’s a win win win.”
Cobb told the student-athletes, “This whole program is not about us (co-founders Joel Cobb and Nich Cornwell). It’s all about you. It’s what you make it, and our job is to give you the opportunity and share what matters in life.’