Whakapapa 2023

Welcome to Eli's & Magnus' fundraiser! Board Game Edition!

Allow us to introduce ourselves. We are Elisabeth "Eli" Ludwig, a kickboxer from Germany, and a mentee in the 2023 TAP cohort, and Magnus Sandvik Mangrud, a handball and beach handball player from Norway, and proudly serving as a TAP mentor in the same cohort.

Over the past year, we've had the incredible opportunity to be part of TAP's mentoring program. It's been a transformative experience, and now we're excited to start our own fundraising campaign in order to give other athletes the chance to be a part in the cohort 2024.

Our fundraising project centers around bridging the distance between our respective cities: Lillehammer, Norway, and Leipzig, Germany. However, we're infusing our unique creativity into this endeavor.

We've turned this into a virtual board game where advancement relies on completing special challenges. Each challenge reflects the spirit of TAP, allowing us to share our meaningful experiences within the program. These challenges will be documented in videos and shared on our social media platforms, enabling everyone interested to follow our journey.

Our involvement with TAP and its mentoring program has been immensely rewarding. This project is our way of giving back to this incredible community and potentially assisting other mentees in joining this program. Your support, whether big or small, means the world to us.

"Even a small step is a step in the right direction."

(You can find more information about TAP and the fundraiser challenge in the following section)

Whakapapa is The True Athlete Project's summer fundraising campaign.  When we designed this fundraising challenge, we knew that it needed to be about more than just raising money; it should also bring the TAP community together and build on our shared mission to create a better world through sport. 

To this end, we have been inspired by a Māori concept, which is at the heart of the New Zealand All Blacks culture, called Whakapapa.

Whakapapa says that each of us are part of an unbreakable chain of people, stretching back in time to our first ancestors and forward in time to the end of time. This chain represents our tribe. We share a purpose with these people. We belong. It is a powerful idea that suggests that we will be judged not on our material successes in life, but on what we did for our tribe.

With this fundraising campaign we aim to connect the current cohort of mentors and mentees on our Global Mentoring Programme with next years generation of mentoring pairings.

This is about both giving back and paying it forward, and we envisage it becoming a wave that passes through each cohort, connecting them in an unbreakable chain.

#CommunityResponsibility

Who are The True Athlete Project? 

TAP is a US and UK based charity which aims to build a more compassionate world through sport. We design and deliver a range of creative, mindfulness-based programmes for athletes and coaches at all levels of sport - from primary school children to Olympians and Parlaympians. We work with 40+ sports, in over 15 countries. 

We also deliver a pioneering athlete mentoring programme, pairing world-class athletes with young people in a year-long nurturing relationship. Our aim is to unleash sports true potential to holistically nurture the long-term personal development of each and every athlete.