London, Dec. 6 (ANI): Tottenham and England star, Jermaine Jenas, is on a personal crusade to educate children and try to help them banish poverty, famine, crime and racism.
Jenas has begun his amazing mission in the rough districts of Nottingham, but he is also targeting human suffering in Africa.
Jenas - who passed 11 GCSEs at school - is giving the rest of the Premier League's superstars a lesson in the art of compassion.
The 26-year-old midfield ace has set up a teacher recruitment company, given inspirational talks to youngsters and is also helping raise funds for a Nottingham school's project to build a library for poverty-stricken orphans in Uganda. enas may have it all - he is worshipped on one side of North London, earns thousands doing what he loves, lives with a model fiancie and has a wardrobe full of designer gear, but he has never forgotten his roots.
It's his tough childhood growing up as the only boy from a mixed-race family on a rough council estate in Clifton that makes him want to help the needy.
"I was brought up on a council estate in Nottingham. It was tough. There weren't a lot of black people and I encountered a lot of racism. I was called all sorts of names, including 'nigger'. I have never forgotten those racist taunts but, in a way, they drove me on to become a professional footballer," News of the World quoted him, as saying.
"I grew up with a white mum and a black dad and my mum taught me that people are equal no matter what their colour. But a lot of the kids in Clifton were not of that mindset. I'd go to school, someone would call me a racist name, I had a short fuse then and might react in the wrong way."
"Within those teams were people who racially abused me. At the time it hurt and you ask: 'Why are you being like that?' I'm not excusing it, but it was more an ignorance, a lack of education, rather than hatred," he added. (ANI)
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