UCLA and NBA legend’s Skyhook Foundation and Adidas give UCLA Community School students new gear
In the annals of professional basketball, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar has made his mark as a champion at his alma mater, UCLA, and in the NBA. On Nov. 17, he further cemented his legendary vision off the court on a visit to UCLA Community School, where his nonprofit, the Skyhook Foundation — in partnership with Adidas, the UCLA Alumni Association and Foundation, and the Los Angeles Unified School District — gifted students with new shoes and a backpack during a “Lace Up for Learning” event.
“You can’t let learning only be about what happens in the classroom,” Abdul-Jabbar said to students assembled in the gymnasium at Robert F. Kennedy Community Schools in Koreatown–Pico-Union, where the UCLA Community School is located. “When I was your age, there were a lot of things I was curious about, and I had to figure out a way to find out about them. You’ve got to have your eyes open [and] go out into your world where you live and find out about it … find out about the things you want to do and that you want to learn about.”
Abdul-Jabbar was assisted in distributing the Adidas shoes and backpacks to students from the fourth, fifth and sixth grades at UCLA Community School by scores of volunteers from UCLA and LAUSD, as well as Deborah Morales, executive director of the Skyhook Foundation; Queena Kim, principal of UCLA Community School; Christina Christie, the Wasserman Dean of the UCLA School of Education & Information Studies; and Cheryl Lott, chair of The UCLA Foundation board of directors and a UC alumni regent emerita.
