Sofia Begal is definitely a good sport and a great tennis player. The sophomore at Kent Denver School is all-state and a doubles state champion.
She’s had so much success on the court at such an early age. But that's not even half of her story.
Begal has already started a nonprofit charitable foundation to help kids in Mozambique, Africa learn to play tennis, and come to the United States to chase their tennis dreams and go to school.
“I have a family friend (Chris Buck) who lives in Mozambique. He's a doctor there,” Begal told Denver7. “We both have a huge love for tennis and we both wanted to find a way to give back to our community. So, because of our love for tennis and education, we decided to found Advantage Mozambique. Our nonprofit has pretty much three kind of sub organizations in place. Our first one is giving young kids in Mozambique, just the opportunity to get to play tennis and get exposure to it. And then our second part is sending the more promising athletes giving them helping cover the rest of their partial scholarships so that they can come study in the US. And then the third part is giving things like English lessons to those athletes that are coming to the US.”
So far, Advantage Mozambique has raised enough money to help two promising tennis players from the country come to the US, get into college and play tennis. Jaime Sigauque and Ana Vassilis are thriving at Barton Community College in Kansas. They would have never had this opportunity without the support of Advantage Mozambique.
Begal said the foundation is just getting started, and with the help and support of her family and her friends, the future is very bright.
“We started less than a year ago, so I think our plans are definitely to help support more athletes as well just get so many more young kids in in Mozambique, the opportunity to just get to play tennis,” Begal said. “I'm planning on getting a lot of my friends involved, and just trying to put on any tennis tournaments that we can to help raise money, or just get exposure for the nonprofit as a whole. I think it's so important. It just gives me a chance to positively impact the lives of so many people, especially with something I love, which is tennis.”
