During March, we celebrated Women's History Month and International Women's Day. This year, we celebrate the 50th anniversary of Title IX and the 50th year of girls’ soccer in Washington state. We believe that to play is human and that it is every child’s right. Together, we Defend the Right to Play for all. This month, we also celebrated the amazing women of Sounders FC and their contributions to making us a championship club during Women’s History Month, and all year long.
International Women's Day at White Center Heights Elementary
In celebration of International Women's Day, RAVE Foundation and Zulily brought joy and free play, through soccer, to 50 girls at White Center Heights Elementary. Each girl received her own RAVE Foundation soccer ball, Sounders FC jersey, and two tickets to our CCL match against León on International Women's Day!
Support Woman-Owned Businesses
To celebrate Women's History Month, we continued our partnership with Intentionalist, collaborating on a variety of fun ways for fans to explore and #SpendLikeItMatters in support of the woman-owned small businesses in our communities.
Alongside our fellow pro sports teams - Seattle Storm, Seattle Seahawks, OL Reign, Seattle Mariners and Seattle Kraken - we encouraged and incentivized the community to buy from local woman-owned small businesses. During Women's History Month, fans could upload their receipts from woman-owned small businesses for the chance to win a prize pack from their favorite team. Thanks to the immense support of the community, over $29,000 in receipts were uploaded from woman-owned businesses in March!
Matchday Means More
In honor of International Women’s Day, Zulily and RAVE Foundation gave away 200 soccer balls to girls in attendance at our CCL match on March 8, against Leon.
Support Woman-Owned Businesses
Last December, we partnered with Intentionalist for the 2022 schedule release, spotlighting BIPOC and minority-owned businesses associated with each month of matches. As a continuation of this theme, throughout the 2022 season, we are excited to host each featured restaurant at a special pop-up in Lumen Field’s PNW Marketplace concessions area! Celebrating Women's History Month, our featured restaurant on March 12 was Salvadorean Bakery, who served their famous pupusas to hungry fans!
We also continued to intentionally align the North Plaza food trucks with our social impact and cultural calendar. Last month, in celebration of Women’s History Month, we hosted two woman-owned food trucks in the North Plaza on March 12: Tabassum and Big Boys Filipino Food Truck.
Offsetting our Carbon Footprint
As the first carbon neutral professional soccer team in North America and the first carbon neutral pro sports team in the United States, we commit to measuring, offsetting, and work towards reducing our footprint every year. On March 6, we offset our 2019 and 2020 footprints by planting trees along the Green-Duwamish River in Tukwila with 65 of our friends from Forterra, Dirt Corps, staff, fans and our community!
Since 2019, alongside our partners, we have planted over 1,400 trees in our local community. This year's plantings were located along an area of the river important for Chinook and Steelhead salmon recovery. Planting conifers creates long-term shade along the river, leading to the cooler water temperatures that are vital to the health of the salmon population. The trees will be monitored by Forterra through maturity to ensure impact.
Additional benefits of this community-based tree planting include increased ecological diversity; increased climate resiliency; reduced stormwater and pollution runoff; improved public health in urbanized areas and ethnically diverse communities; and improved equity and social justice outcomes through community engagement, workforce development and youth leadership, including participants from: Dirt Corps, Unleash the Brilliance, the Duwamish Valley Youth Corps
