It’s more than football: The 49ers’ charity work is felt as far away as Fiji
Jesse Lovejoy used to roam Candlestick Park during 49ers games unattended when he was growing up in the late 1970s. His father was a credentialed photographer and editor for the Santa Cruz Sentinel who would set up in the camera well while Jesse and his brother would roam free.
Back then there was much less security. The football team wasn’t very good (this was before Bill Walsh created the dynasty of the 80s, after all). But now Lovejoy is associated with the team in a new way while the football team is back among the NFL’s prominent.
As the undefeated 49ers look to extend their best start to a season in 29 years, they’re also extending their reach to help communities in need away from the football field.
They’re doing it in a unique fashion – and they’re broadening the scope well beyond the Bay Area, including nearly 5,500 miles away in the South Pacific. Lovejoy is at the forefront.
Sports in the schools
In September, Lovejoy, now the director of 49ers EDU, took a trip to the island of Fiji, where the school system is underfunded and some 15 percent of children do not finish eight years of primary education, in hope of helping the public school system engage students with a curriculum centered around sports.
Fiji, of course, is known as a premier destination where tourism is a driver of the local economy, but not an efficient one toward education.
“It doesn’t matter if a kid is in a rural school in Fiji with no electricity, no plumbing and no understanding of what (educational technology) looks like in our building, or a kid in Palo Alto. They are the same kid,” Lovejoy told The Bee. “They want to feel safe, they want to feel engaged, they want to sense energy excitement, and they’re all learners. They’re all looking for a way to engage in something new.”
How does an employee of an NFL team end up helping teachers on an island so far away?
It starts with an ethos from the top of the 49ers organization. Denise DeBartolo York and John York, co-chairs and parents of CEO Jed York, have longed prioritized education as a way of connecting with Bay Area communities. Keeping kids safe, on track and in school are three principles the Yorks have stood by during their time running the organization.
Which led a priority in the construction of Levi’s Stadium when it was built in 2014: create an educational hub where students can learn applied sciences through something they might enjoy more than sitting in classroom, like playing sports.
It eventually led to the founding of 49ers EDU in 2014, an arm of the team’s charitable foundation and museum inside the stadium, that hosts some 60,000 students a year to learn through the STEAM curriculum (science, technology, engineering, arts and math).
For example, studying how the shape of a football effects how it travels through the air versus a round soccer ball. Or trying a 40-yard dash with a parachute and evaluating how wind resistance can slow a runner down, and how it can positively impact the ability to run without it.
“Geometry and data analytics are present in every sport,” Lovejoy said. “The concepts of physics and force in motion in present in every sport. The idea of the evolution of sporting equipment as a way of engineering is present in every sport. So let’s look at these things that exist categorically. ... So we did that first day, and then we went to five different schools over the course of the next two days, where I ran interactive learning sessions for kids.”
49ers a unique NFL team
The 49ers say they are the only team in the NFL with full-time educators on staff. They are likely the only team in major professional pro sports influencing foreign countries with an educational curriculum they generated on their own. They’ve been asked to consult other teams trying to build their own educational platforms.
“The number one thing when you talk to Jesse that comes out is his passion for education and teaching kids and the fact that he’s coming up with a way to do it by using his passion for football,” said Roger Hacker, the team’s director of corporate communications. “And working at this venue I think has been icing on the cake for him.”
Lovejoy, who runs the team’s museum in addition to his 49ers EDU responsibilities, is on a Smithsonian education board, and was connected with the U.S. State Department through a trip to work with the Chelsea Football Club of the English Premier League, with whom he consulted with about implementing a similar program.
Throughout the process, Lovejoy was connected with Trina Bolton in the U.S. Department of State’s sports diplomacy division, who asked if Lovejoy would help the Fijian government work with teachers to improve its local schools.
Lovejoy was the lone 49ers representative on an envoy along with former U.S. Olympic Volleyball player Danielle Scott-Arruda. It was a short trip, from Sept. 22 to 24, that included over 20 hours of travel and going over the date line, which meant landing back in the Bay Area eight hours before he took off from Nadi, which has one of the two international airports on Fiji.
“We did a series of motion-based activities where kids could first learn about the forces, what are they, how are they manipulated, and how do they look in other aspects of life,” Lovejoy said. “I think the response was exactly what I would hope it would be.”
Football and school knowledge
There was a gap in knowledge about football among the students. The NFL is not prevalent on the island. Rugby, net ball and volleyball are far more popular, which led to Lovejoy centering his lessons around those sports.
“Sports is a common language among the diverse people of the Pacific islands,” said Alena Vesikula-Vatuwaliwali, who works at the U.S. Embassy in Fiji, in an e-mail to The Bee. “By using this ‘language,’ Fiji’s recent Sports Envoy Program firmly met its objective of generating more interest among our young people in STEAM education and careers. Through both the theory workshops with educators, and the practical sessions with students, Jesse and Danielle effectively advocated for using sports as an important tool in teaching STEAM concepts.
“You could see that these teachers, most working with very scarce resources, often with large student-teacher ratios, appreciated this new approach.”
So what’s next?
Lovejoy met with the Fiji National Sports Commission, which is responsible for training the physical education teachers in the public school system, and is considering a training program to integrate Lovejoy’s versions of STEAM principles into gym classes. He’s also having discussions with the State Department about ways to help other countries improve their education systems through STEAM.
As an employee of the team, of course, Lovejoy remains an ardent 49ers fan. He can still roam free at games like he did during his formative years. Only now it’s because he’s credentialed.