GOPHERS IN THE COMMUNITY:FOOTBALLS' MOSES ALIPATE

Courtesy: University of Minnesota


Release:09/20/2010


Rising Star Reaches Out: Moses Alipate



When he isn’t at practice, working towards his business and marketing degrees or spending time with his family, sophomore Minnesota Gopher football player Moses Alipate is lending a hand to those in need.

In addition to working a great deal with the M.A.G.I.C. (Maroon and Gold Impacting the Community) program at the University of Minnesota, Alipate has found another way to contribute to his community by working closely with Minnesota-based Hope for the City.


Hope for the City was established in 2000 by Dennis and Megan Doyle in order to take corporate surplus and donate it to help those in great need. Alipate works with other volunteers to organize, package and distribute donations and contributions that benefit recipients in Minneapolis and all over the nation. Hope for the City provides food shelves, youth programs, schools, senior centers, homeless shelters, clinics, hospitals, and orphanages with excess products from retailers, medical companies and food distributors that otherwise would have gone to waste. Families and churches can ask for help and send in requests for care packages like the ones Alipate helps to assemble.


Megan Doyle commends Moses’ work, saying “When Moses has helped in our warehouse… he is a tireless worker, he does not believe in being idle, and anytime his work directions were complete he would go and find staff for more work to do. The other kids who are with him who are younger just naturally followed him and looked up to him and he was a great example for the other kids that were there too that you don’t wait for work to come to you, you go and find it.”


A volunteer since he was eleven years old, Alipate says that he loves working with Hope for the City and that it’s just “another way [for me] to help.” After graduation from the University of Minnesota, Alipate wants to use what he’s learning in the classroom and out of the classroom with Hope for the City to start non-profit organizations and hospitals in third world countries. He would be taking the fundamentals he learns volunteering with M.A.G.I.C. and with Hope for the City to build and develop life-changing programs in the places where they need it most. Alipate says, “I’ve known Dennis and Megan [Doyle] since I was really little so I just learn from what they have to say about how to get it started, how to maintain a good organization…those are things I’ve picked up from them.”

In addition to working with Hope for the City on the weekends, Alipate also takes time to organize service events with the Gopher football team like visits to the University of Minnesota Amplatz Children’s Hospital, volunteer as a football team with the HopeKids organization and still returns to his high school to help with a mentorship program he started. In the mentorship program, Alipate explains, “the upper-class athletes get a chance to go and mentor the eighth and ninth graders and tell them what not to do, things to look out for and just mentor them on how not to be influenced in bad ways…when I go back to my high school I usually have a chance to go and meet with all those guys.”

Alipate and his teammates go to the Amplatz Children’s Hospital every Friday prior to home games. “The first time I went was before our first home game against the Air Force and it just gives us a chance to go and interact with kids who usually don’t get a lot of visitors…and so we got to [go] talk with them, and just make their day a little better, a little easier,” Alipate details.

Alipate says that his favorite and the most rewarding part about volunteering is that “you learn to work as a team with other people, and…the biggest thing is the feeling you get at the end of the day when everything’s done, the kind of sense of accomplishment you get from helping other people…the reason I do it is because my family has always told us that it’s better to give than to receive so I’ve always understood that it’s better to help out than it is to just sit around and play video games.”

You could say that this Gophers quarterback really is a team player.

For more information about Hope for the City, visit www.hopeforthecity.net.


Feature Written by CHAMPS/Life Skills Student Intern Ellie Lijewski