Link <div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'>Just received a lovely note from Christina Vuocolo, the vice president of the Randy Foye Foundation. I’ve always been fond of Randy, who was a first-team All-American at Villanova in 2006, is currently a member of the Minnesota Timberwolves and wants to make the city of Newark, N.J., a better place to live. The Randy Foye Foundation’s main goal is raising money to renovate and rebuild 1st/3rd Street Park in Newark’s North Ward. It is right down the street from where Foye grew up and was never a place that kids could go to play. It’s overrun by a lot of bad influences, but Foye wants to make it a place where kids can play and grow together in a comfortable and safe atmosphere, while adding to the overall aesthetics of the city and hopefully decreasing crime and violence in that area. 300_foye.jpgNewark Mayor Cory Booker is renovating 14 parks as part of a citywide project - which means the foundation has to raise $750,000, which will then be matched by city funds. Foye is hosting a gala - called, “A Night for Newark” - at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center tomorrow night that will be the first big fund raiser for this park. Additionally, Foye has expressed vivid interest in working with the kids of Newark. The genesis for the foundation occurred when Foye was in Newark recently and was at one of the gyms watching some neighborhood kids play basketball. One of the kids was sitting out, who was supposedly one of the better players in the gym. So Foye went over and asked him why he wasn’t playing. The boy told Foye that he had a hole in his sneakers, and he couldn’t run because it was giving him blisters and hurting his feet. Foye took the boy to the store and bought him two pairs of sneakers. “With everything Randy has been through in his life, this was really a pivotal point for him as he made a vow to be present in his community and help out the kids,” Vuocolo said. “His outreach is often unsolicited. He’ll go back to Newark several times a week and sometimes he’ll email me pictures from his cell phone of him and a bunch of kids from his neighborhood. He’s out there because he genuinely wants to be, and he enjoys every minute of being around young kids and trying to serve as a positive role model for them. “The Randy Foye Foundation has a program called Assist 4 Life piloting in his old elementary school, Dr. E. Alma Flagg, in the North Ward. It identifies at-risk 7th and 8th grade students and works with them in several areas. While many of the kids are surely at-risk, we invited all of the students going into 7th and 8th grade for the coming year to write an essay on why they felt they should be picked for the program - basically telling their life story. “Randy chose eight kids whose story was most similar to his own, and we have been spending a lot of time with those kids this summer, taking them on trips, etc. Randy spoke to all 70 students in the two grades at the end of the past school year, and they were fired up about having him back and participating in the contest. The students we chose will be introduced at the gala. We had a fun day taking them shopping for outfits at Short Hills mall last week - in fact, the school’s literacy coach Joyce McCree, who accompanies the students on our trips, told us that one of the students hadn’t smiled in almost two months, and on the day of the shopping trip he was beaming the entire time. She thanked us for what she called the ‘small miracles’ that Randy is already creating just by being a presence in these children’s lives. We will be providing mentorship throughout the school year while Randy is away.”</div>
