The Harrington Family Foundation

Who says one person can't make a difference? And everybody knows the efforts of a few are better than one.

Take the passionate concern of one young woman from Portland, now working in Uganda, and combine that with the care and connections of Portland native Joey Harrington and his parents, and you come up with a nice story of about long distance compassion.

All it took was one soccer ball and an e-mail sent from Uganda to Portland a few months ago.

Gina Bramucci grew up in Portland. In fact, the Bramuccis and the Harringtons became family friends in the years their children were going through parochial schools in this city.

Today Gina is working on a master's degree in journalism at the University of Missouri. As part of her work, last January Gina arrived in Kampala, Uganda, to intern at the Association of Volunteers in International Service, a relief agency, and to write Web site articles on the Ugandan civil war for Reuters.

Gina had been in Uganda once before. After she arrived in January she began sending group e-mails to family and friends in Portland, sharing her observations. "There's a sense of desperation that's replaced the hopefulness I saw in 2001," she wrote.

Since the insurgency began in the 1980s, rebels "have abducted more than 20,000 children to use as porters, soldiers and, in the case of girls, sex slaves," Gina wrote. The children "are often forced to murder family members and neighbors, then placed on the front lines against the government army."

According to Human Rights Watch, more than 8,500 children have been abducted in Uganda just since June 2002.

When Gina visited the northern town of Kitgum in February, she saw "thousands of people take refuge in the hospitals and town businesses at night." Most rebel attacks are directed against civilians. "The hospital wards are overflowing, understaffed and underfunded, with so many trauma cases from gunshot wounds and land mines they can't keep up . . ."

The markets were empty, she wrote. The schools had been shut down. "Very young children roam the streets in packs all night because it's too risky to sleep at home."

By summer, Gina was sending even more grim reports. "I watch the conflict unfold with my own sense of desperation," she wrote.

In late July, a Portland friend came to Uganda to visit Gina. The two took a safari tour, learned Ugandan dances and brought a soccer ball to children orphaned because of AIDS. Gina wrote home, "The world is all goodness for a minute because the learning center finally has a soccer ball."

Back in Portland, says Valerie Harrington, "I read that e-mail and thought, 'Gosh. If one soccer ball can bring that much joy, what could 100 soccer balls do?' "

Because Valerie's son, Detroit Lion's quarterback Joey Harrington, has a contract with Nike, "it just seemed feasible to send a quantity of soccer balls to Gina, so she could distribute them and give these kids some pleasure in their tragic lives."

Joey thought it was a great idea, and his dad, John, agreed.

So at the request of the Harrington Family Foundation, Nike agreed to provide a large number of bright blue, uninflated soccer balls. Valerie shipped 48 of them to Uganda, with pumps to inflate them, in a test mailing two weeks ago. "We all waited with bated breath," Valerie says. "You never know when you send something to an underdeveloped country how honest their customs and postal service people are. But they got there, every one of them."

The foundation will soon send many more soccer balls to be distributed to orphanages and re-integration centers, where abducted children who escape from the rebels are assisted.

Gina and the Harringtons know some will question a gift of soccer balls, when Ugandan children need food and shelter. Gina points to Article 31 of the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child. "What it boils down to," Gina wrote to Valerie, "is that children have a right to joy and play," and, "essentially, to be children."

In Uganda, Gina says she sees "thousands of children who, instead of going to school and playing, spend their days learning firsthand about war and loss and hunger, and spend their nights worrying about being abducted. Then you have the children who have escaped captivity, who are haunted by memories of the crimes they committed as rebel soldiers. . . . At least a kid playing with a soccer ball . . . isn't worrying about war and abduction."

Valerie admires Gina Bramucci for trying to open the world's eyes to what's happening in Uganda. Two weeks ago, Gina e-mailed friends asking them to join a Human Rights Watch campaign to apply pressure for the release of kidnapped Ugandan children, by writing letters to the U.N. secretary-general and the president of Uganda. (http://hrw.org/campaigns/uganda)

"Just printing out the sample letter would take no time at all," Valerie says. Helping people far away "doesn't have to be some huge, magnanimous thing," she says. "One small gesture can have a huge impact in a child's life."

One small gesture. Like writing one letter. Like giving one soccer ball.