These are some of the awesome women starting up the first ever RISSE women’s basketball team, to be named the Bedlam Farm  Warriors, despite my desperate pleas for a different name. Having met these very determined women, all refugee children from the bloodshed of the Congo, I am proud to have the name of our farm on their new uniforms (once we buy them.)

Risse, under awful pressure from slashed government subsidies and bitter partisan politics, does not have extra money to support the team or buy them uniforms (and equipment bags?), I met with Francis Sengabo, the director of Operations at RISSE, and he and Ali asked me if I could do it. i agreed, I said I would surely try, and I will.

If you can help, please donate to Jon Katz, P.O. Box 205, Cambridge, N.Y., 12816, or [email protected]. Please mark the donation “basketball uniforms” or RISSE women’s basketball.

I’m planning to take this one step at a time, the uniforms first. That will be about $1,000. As other things arise, if they do, I’ll price them and write about them one step at a time. You know the motto: We do the best we can for as long as we can.

I also am pricing basketball equipment bags, they cost between $25 and $30, but the uniforms come first. They can hold one basketball and a uniform and sneakers.

I told the girls about the Army of Good, and they were wide-eyed and incredulous. I think they had never heard of such a thing before. Ali is already building some camaraderie and unity among the team, it will be exciting to watch them. he has been working for a long time to get this  team together.

I asked the team to line up in front of me, and Rachel, the RISSE Team Captain, took the lead position, the other young women fell in behind her. As I looked into those eyes, I thought this was going to be exciting and rewarding. She is quite determined.. Thanks for considering this.