The American star, currently ranked as the fifth best female golfer in the world, talks about her collaborations with UNICEF USA and local food banks. 


Danielle Kang

Photograph: Getty Images

Known just as much for her loud personality as her skills on the course, LPGA player Danielle Kang is one of the biggest characters in women's golf. Over the last few weeks she has been keeping us entertained whilst at home during lockdown with her @challengeeachother campaign, launched to raise money for Three Square, a non-profit organisation that helps feed those in need in Las Vegas, Nevada.

At the time of writing she has raised $2, 802 and she hopes to raise much more by the time she's done.

But the player's charitable streak passion for feeding the hungry started long before we had to start thinking up inventive golfing drills in our back gardens.

Take a look at her Instagram or Google her name and you'll be inundated with posts about her work as a brand ambassador for UNICEF, and she has also been working with Three Square since long before the pandemic hit.

She spoke out about why her desire to help the hungry has been built into her since an early age.

Why did you want to become part of the UNICEF team?

Well, to be honest UNICEF is just a part of who I am, an organisation that I've wanted to work with since I was young.

I want people to know that there are children that are still suffering from preventable causes out there. We're worried about a lot of little things in our lives, but some people can't find food, they don't have shelter, they don't have medical care or families.

I just want people to be aware that those things do go on around the world, even today. We don't really realise how fortunate we are sometimes.

Danielle Kang

How did you come to realise?

When I was younger I used to go to Busan, Korea a lot with my dad. Back then the country needed help from the world organisations, where as now South Korea is donating over $100 million to UNICEF in order to help in other Asian countries. They've progressed in so many positive ways.

My dad used to take me around to homeless people and kids and give out food to them. I used to ask my dad "why are we buying so much food?"
He said: "well you might not think about it, but these people can't find food."

There were veterans as well that didn't have arms and legs and who couldn't find jobs.

So that moment kind of stuck with me. Kids don't have a lot of power and they're vulnerable, but they're the ones that are going to shape our future. I feel if we can do anything to help one kid's life and they can make a better change in the future, that's just my goal.

Your dad sounds very cool...

He always used to say "you can't get anything done if you're hungry". He would give out boxes and boxes of food. I try to do that on my own, in California for instance. There's still a lot of homeless people in certain areas, but there are hands-on food banks to help people.

I think the children in Korea just settled with me because I was a kid. Looking at other kids who were hungry was kind of shocking to me. There are a lot of things we can help with them, whether it's clean water, food or shelter.

Danielle Kang 2

Have any other people or moments have a really big impact on you?

I went on a trip to Dominican Republic with the group UNICEF Next-Gen. That was a pretty powerful trip. It was kind of ignorant of myself perhaps but I didn't realise that that child marriages still existed.

I've met some of them, 14 year olds that were married and pregnant, things like that.

Yeah, that was pretty shocking. I can't really put it into words. I'm still thinking over it. And going into hospitals that didn't have sanitation and clean water. We walk into a hospital and we kind of already expect things to be clean and we expect to have water. We expect to have treatments.

The world is just bigger than us. It's bigger than golf, bigger than anyone.

You can find out more about Danielle's @challengeeachother campaign at https://pledgeit.org/threesquare and her work with UNICEF at https://www.unicefusa.org/.

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