Community Star of the Week: Team Up 4 Community

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Teresa and Steve Webb want student athletes to get involved in their community.

That's why they founded and run Team Up 4 Community (TU4C), an international community giveback project of the W20 Foundation, that targets athletes beginning at the age of six all through the collegiate level to get involved in their communities with acts of service that instill educational, developmental and social goals.
Since 2011, Teresa has been orchestrating the local efforts on Long Island for Team Up 4 Community and for the past three years those endeavors have extended across New York State. Webb and her husband, Steve, a former New York Islander who founded Team Up 4 Community, spearheaded the initiative in New York, but the organization has made positive impacts across North America.
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"We run community service challenges in the school year," Teresa said. "We also do an entire New York State challenge, with the NYSPHSAA (New York State Public High School Athletic Association). It's the same concept; it's to encourage athletes to get out there and help out their community. They share their projects on Team Up 4 Community's website so they can share the work that they're doing. Our goal with it is that it will inspire others to take action and to get back in their communities."
Teresa is the Executive Director of Team Up 4 Community and is involved in all of the minuscule details of the Long Island and New York initiatives. For the athletes, those acts of service within their community can range from fundraisers, to participating in walks/runs, food drives and much more.
This year with the international COVID-19 outbreak, some of the events or acts of service have taken on a different look to ensure they follow safe and socially distanced protocols.
"They're definitely getting creative on things they can do from home," Teresa said. "They're getting together and doing things that they can with social distancing. They're doing virtual walks now, some took the time to make masks from home, others raised money for essential workers, we're still doing a lot of drive up food drives, and even had one team create scarecrow decorations for their town. So, they're still finding ways to give back."

While helping organize teams all across the Long Island and New York Area for the entirety of the school year can be taxing, Teresa finds the efforts and involvement in these initiatives to be rewarding.
"It's rewarding when you hear some of the stories because they're focusing on a lot of the issues that affect their own town or families in their own town," Teresa said. "When you hear some of those stories it chokes you up and it's nice to see that these young athletes are giving back to people who need it. The stories are always nice to hear. That's what makes it rewarding, to see that they are taking the time to help people."
Also, since 2011, Teresa has witnessed the growth across the New York region and North America as a whole. This year, Team Up 4 Community is expanding into Massachusetts and Teresa has helped communicate with the respective school officials, athletic directors and coaches to provide access and help get them involved.
"It has a little bit of a ripple effect," Teresa said. "If one team says, 'Oh hey, they're doing this. We can do that too.' That's rewarding because someone who had maybe never heard of it before saw their friends or maybe a rival team participating in it and now they want to get involved."
For more information on how to get involved with
Team Up 4 Community, please visit their website
, create an account and explore the upcoming challenges and initiatives that other athletes have participated in.