Mac Millar

It was 2013 when I wrote a letter to the Australian Minister for Defence, asking the Australian soliders to deliver soccer balls to children in Tarin Kot, Afghanistan. Almost 10 years, 4053 soccer balls, and 27 countries down-the-track, I've asked five of my closest mates from University to jump on-board - and Kicks for Kids was born.

 

I'm currently in my fourth year of the University of Queensland's Bachelor of Advanced Business (Honours), with majors in Analytics and Finance. I have spent time as an undergraduate consultant across strategy & capital advisory service lines at Rennie Advisory, working on solving problems related to the energy transition. In addition to my work and study here in Australia, I've undertaken additional abroad at the London School of Economics and Political Science, across areas including venture capital, private equity, and derivative instruments.

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Why do I want to be a part of Kicks for Kids?

 

I understand I'm biased, but our mission at Kicks for Kids is something I believe in so wholeheartedly. This idea that sport could be utilised as an instrument to provide disadvantaged children with a means of relief, was in one way born out of naivety. I was a 9-year-old who couldn't understand why the kids I was seeing in war-torn regions of Afghanistan on TV didn't have soccer balls. Looking back now - I think this is important. 

 

As an Aussie kid, soccer balls were my first thought, not safety, shelter, or food. Kids deserve the opportunity to grow up worried about losing their soccer ball, not their home. There are incredible people working on solving the wicked problems that underpin these humanitarian disasters - but we want to focus on this tremendous capacity that sport has to bring kids together to just be kids. Along the way, we hope we our mission is a reminder that children shouldn't have the right to be a kid taken away from them, when adults can't get it right.