The NBA and the WNBA believe that furthering the communities in which their players live and work is an essential part of maintaining an honorable basketball franchise.
The San Antonio Silver Stars are no exception. Through involvement with the surrounding community of San Antonio, the Silver Stars promote education and wellness to the kids that live there.
WNBA Cares Program
The Silver Stars are deeply committed to the WNBA Cares Program. This program places a special emphasis on women’s health and fitness, especially breast health. The health programs are mainly geared towards the idea that small changed in a woman’s everyday lifestyle can add up to a big overall affect.
They believe that making small, step-by-step changes is essential to changing the way one lives, as large changes can be both overwhelming and defeating.
In addition to the commitment to women’s healthy through the WNBA Cares Program, the Silver Stars have hosted a Breast Cancer Awareness Night in conjunction with the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation, the American Cancer Society, the Alamo Breast Cancer Foundation, as well as other local cancer organizations from Texas.
WNBA Fit
The Silver Stars also participate regularly in the WNBA Fit initiative, which is a subset of the WNBA Cares Program. This initiative is designed to encourage girls and women of all ages to learn more about their bodies, how they function and the proactive steps they can take to get healthier. The initiative strives to show women how important physical fitness is to maintaining an overall healthy lifestyle.
Go Red for Women
Heart disease is typically thought of as a male disease. However, the WNBA recognizes that heart disease, as well as other cardiovascular ailments greatly affect women as well. In fact, the disease is the number one killer of women in the United States, even surpassing breast cancer.
Therefore, the Silver Stars have taken part in the Go Red program, designed to raise awareness of women and heart disease.
Bed Nets
During their 2009 season, the Silver Stars partnered with the Spurs Foundation and the United Nations Foundation to raise funds to support Nothing but Nets.
This foundation provides insecticide-treated bed nets to impoverished people in Africa and educates them on how to use it properly. People in Africa can have their lives completely devastated by malaria, and having these bed nets is instrumental in the prevention of the disease.
Reading Programs
Finally, the Silver Stars support a number of youth reading programs, which help support reading education in schools. In San Antonio, the Silver Stars implement the NBA/WNBA program Read to Achieve through read aloud events with Silver Star players and coaches, as well as book drives and educational programming.
The program promotes children reading by encouraging parents to read with their young children and provides support to local teachers with reading resources and programming.
The Silver Stars also participated in the High Five Readers Program, to which they donated a portion of 2500 WNBA tickets to be used as prizes to first through fifth graders participating in the program. Finally, the team partnered with Whataburger in the “What’cha Reading” Summer Reading Program. This program awarded over 1500 children in Texas’ Bexar County for achievements in reading.
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