Redefining Our Values

12 years ago, our co-founders Brett Hughes and Brad Corrigan decided that they wanted to use the sport of lacrosse to better equip youth for life. From their vision, Lacrosse the Nations programming was born. Over these 12 years, our organization has grown to provide educational programming, positive mentorship, nutritional support, and - most importantly - create a multinational family that values service to others.   Along the way, we have adopted ideals shown to us through our partners, our parents, our volunteers and donors, and our student-athletes that have guided us in  staying true to our mission.  To reflect this, Lacrosse the Nations has redefined our core values, and we are so excited to share them with everyone! 

There are four values that we hold ourselves accountable to each day and that guide all of our decisions, from the top down:

• Humility

• Empowerment

• Resilience

• The Power of Connection

Humility stems from our deep respect for all cultures that exist. We strive to serve people from various communities while learning as much as we can from them every single day. We facilitate open conversations in our programming and in our workplace and seek to find solutions through the open sharing of beliefs and ideas. 

The Power of Connection is the knowledge that we are nothing without one another and that we all depend on each other for many things. The members of our organization and our communities are diverse and come from various backgrounds, joined together by this belief in service and the power of sport. We allow ourselves to rely on each other and to build each other up in the best way possible, sharing resources, discussion, and passion.

Empowerment is the feeling our kids get when they accomplish something during practice. It’s the way our volunteers feel when they serve new communities. It is what our donors feel after making a monumental impact around them. It’s what our staff feels when to connect all members of our mission together. Empowerment is the fostering of an individual’s innate, and embracing one’s greatest potential. We strive to make every child, parent, volunteer, donor and staff member feel empowered, strong, and capable of accomplishing any goal they face, whether they conquer it alone or with the help of others. 

Resilience is the ability to recover quickly; to be flexible and unbreakable. In our programs and in our workplace, we identify, encourage, and reward skills in overcoming adversity. As an organization, we embrace roadblocks as opportunities to deepen our impact and further our mission.

These core values guide us in every decision we make, small or large. No matter the challenge, we work together to guide and discover new possibilities and solutions. We are grateful to have come as far as we have, thanks to the support and counsel of the many members that make up this LtN Family. We look forward to a future full of opportunities, continuous growth and learning. 

National Youth Sports Week

Remember how it felt to be a child, running around the yard or playing kickball in the street? To be energetic, excited, and have the urge to stay outside until sunset. As a kid, most of us found that the best way to express ourselves and have fun was to play sports or go outside. In recent years, with the booming technological world, many kids find themselves entertained through technological stimulation; video games, movies, and screens. Does this make a difference in who kids will grow up to be? We don’t know, but what we do know is that research supports tons of different ways that participating in sports as a child can benefit! LtN supports National Youth Sports week by demonstrating exactly how the kids in our program are developing important life skills and having fun through the sport of lacrosse. 

Sports have been around for a long time, originating with the Greeks and the Olympics and evolving into the modern sports that we see today. Sports are a huge pastime and are available across all types of media, globally, proving their importance to the world. Sports play an important role in the development of kids too; research shows that there are many benefits to youth sports. Those benefits can include, but are not limited to:

Relay races in Nicaragua

• Building Self-Esteem,

• Physical Benefits,

• Providing Social Interaction,

• Teaching Discipline

• Building Character, Leadership skills, Promoting a Healthy Lifestyle,

• and more!
  
  While youth sports have amazing benefits, they can be challenging and difficult for some kids to engage in due to a variety of reasons among families and children. The most common barriers that prevent involvement in youth sports include:

• Cost,

• Lack of Time,

• and Lack of Inclusive Options
  
  

By identifying these barriers and advocating for change, you can help bring sports to the youth in your community. Some ways that we have helped accomplish this in our communities and programs are by promoting fun and friendly competition, praising activity, promoting the benefits of youth sports to parents, and being role models. Our coaches and volunteers have done an amazing job helping kids and communities get active and demonstrating exactly why participation in youth sports is beneficial. Other ways that you can promote youth participation in your community include; advocating for safety and accessibility, reducing screen time, encouraging getting outside, participation in different activities, and more!

If you want to do some more reading about Youth Sports and their benefits, we recommend this link! https://www.aspenprojectplay.org/youth-sports-facts 

And don’t forget to check out the other ways we’re involved by visiting our social media!

Instagram: @laxthenations

Twitter: @laxthenations

References
http://kidsplayusafoundation.org/benefits-of-youth-sports.html
https://www.superiorhealthplan.com/newsroom/national-youth-sports-week-2020.html
https://www.aspenprojectplay.org/youth-sports-facts/benefits

Maddie's First 6 Months as Panama's Program Director

I have officially crossed the six month mark as a Program Director in Bocas del Toro. It is hard to tell if I feel like I have been here for a year already or just a couple of weeks. Bocas is the type of place that can make you feel at home really quickly but then the next day you realize how much you have left to learn here.

Maddie’s arrival day in Panama.

For example, a friend from the University of Richmond is visiting me at the moment and we went to see a different beach, Bocas del Drago, that I had never been to before. We passed by communities I didn’t even know existed. Embedded deep in the jungle were small schools, a massive (and controversial) housing relocation center, and homes that you could barely see through the thick, Caribbean foliage. But then, this morning, I walked through town and said “Hola” to about 20 familiar faces. Bocas has made me realize that it is possible to know and not know at the same time and even in the same place. 

Nothing has had a bigger impact on me than the children involved with Lacrosse the Nations and Bocas Surf Crew (a local partner nonprofit of ours here in Bocas that uses surf as their tool for youth development). When I signed on to work as a Program Director for LtN, my biggest worry was that I was going to have a hard time working with the kids. I thought that I wouldn’t be able to connect with them or they wouldn’t understand me. And I was so wrong. Lacrosse the Nations showed me that I always want to work with kids, and this is just the beginning of that. These children quite literally opened my eyes to opportunity, possibility, and what you can make of yourself if you just put fear aside. They also taught me that you actually can live life as freely as you want to. And it started from the way their parents are. Not like these parents know something that parents in the U.S. don’t, it's more so that these parents worked really hard here to create a business and their kids were often left to do whatever they wanted to with friends and created their own personalities and their own lives. Any kid participating in LtN’s programs is involved because they want to be, not because their parents signed them up. That is the best part of Lacrosse the Nations, it really puts a lot of the responsibility in the kids hands.

Maddie (left) coaching up our kids in Bocas del Toro, Panama.

We as adults can often be made to think that if kids don’t have someone holding their hand and telling them what to do, that they will make the wrong decision or get into trouble. But what is life if you never make the wrong decision? You cannot create experience in that way. I have learned and became a of the part of the message that kids are capable and competent - not only to make their own decisions, but to emerge as critically engaged leaders in their communities. In these past 6 months, LtN has taught me many unexpected lessons. More than anything, I am grateful that in my decision to come here to help others, I unknowingly joined a community that wanted to help me too.