In March of 2016, Brandon Bye and Federico Tavarez, two students at Western Michigan University, started a used-clothing drive for specifically soccer gear in the city of Kalamazoo, Michigan.  They hoped to ship the donations overseas to soccer clubs in low-income communities of the Dominican Republic to help children who could not afford proper soccer clothes.   The goal was to collect 150-200 donations over a two-month period for just one club in the Dominican Republic. Thanks to the generous donations of several local soccer club and private sponsors, they were able to quadruple their original goal and earned over 800 donations.  Fueled and inspired by the surpassing of their original dream, a team of twenty volunteers distributed these donations to eight different clubs around the island later that August.  Since 2016, the Aspiras Foundation has expanded to educational programs for coaches, players and communities in the Dominican Republic, Haiti and Venezuela. www.aspirasfoundation.org