Philanthropy
With the team's new arena and a local restaurant acting as supporters' home, the Empire Supporters Club has begun reaching out to the community by hosting or participating in charity events.
From 2009 to 2011 the club played in the Downtown United Soccer Club's annual supporter's club charity soccer tournament in support of the City Soccer Initiative.
In August 2010 the club used its home venue at El Pastor in Newark to host a fundraiser for Joe Vide, an ex-player diagnosed with cancer.
February 2011, a month before the start of the 2011 MLS season, saw the ESC men's soccer team play in the inaugural South Ward Football Challenge, winning the Spanish Pavilion Cup. The tournament saw teams representing the ESC, Garden State Supporters, Viking Army supporters and NY Red Bull front office play for the cup and bring in both cash and equipment donations for Balls Without Borders and the U.S. Soccer Foundation. 2012 saw the return of the South Ward Football Challenge with the ESC team defending its title and helping, along with the other participating teams, to raise money for the Harrison Housing Authority.
Read more about this topic: Empire Supporters Club
Famous quotes containing the word philanthropy:
“Almost every man we meet requires some civility,—requires to be humored; he has some fame, some talent, some whim of religion or philanthropy in his head that is not to be questioned, and which spoils all conversation with him. But a friend is a sane man who exercises not my ingenuity, but me.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“... the hey-day of a woman’s life is on the shady side of fifty, when the vital forces heretofore expended in other ways are garnered in the brain, when their thoughts and sentiments flow out in broader channels, when philanthropy takes the place of family selfishness, and when from the depths of poverty and suffering the wail of humanity grows as pathetic to their ears as once was the cry of their own children.”
—Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902)
“I shall not be forward to think him mistaken in his method who quickest succeeds to liberate the slave. I speak for the slave when I say that I prefer the philanthropy of Captain Brown to that philanthropy which neither shoots me nor liberates me.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)