from soccer stardom to education thanks michael today with this today michael thank you very much then i'm excited to be here and it was good it should go into absolutely your story is a great one but what i want to do first is as i want you to tell us about the one kingdom foundation because that's what you're working you know play soccer use that as a platform to come back to my home and empower the kids in my country and so we when we started it in two thousand and eleven and and so fights being going on it's been going great we're third year and we're slowly moving ahead to really build a leadership school for the kids of my country because i want to talk an awful lot about the ok but let's talk about you first ok on the website the one thing website which we will have up on the screen several times throughout the show see you've seen cut on some of those areas but we grew up on very very very very very poor i grew up in a house where we only had one bedroom house was made of my heart you know i always say joke and say mosquito  city so yeah i grew up in a very very very very poor environment growing up like that well first off what did your parents do for a living if you will my dad was an arc i could  take my dad actually had a very very good job my mom didn't work and you know she was a stay at home mom while my dad had a good job and were growing up in our environment my dad actually got a transfer from the village to the city and difficult time growing up in ghana and you know one of the things that i always say to my friends was you know what you're my dad growing up really had a tremendous impact on my life because it actually what he did actually prevented me from doing a lot of things growing up like like alcohol like getting involved with drugs because i so much alcohol nearly killed my dad when we were growing up you know he wouldn't take over us he wouldn't pay our fees to go to school so when i was when i was going to was a struggle for for for my brothers and i to even get education it was actually my mom who literally had to sell some of her stuff to put us through school it was a very very difficult time where there are other kids you have other friends that were like you lived in similar circumstances i had a couple friends actually that lived with us when we moved to the city that were in the same environment but actually moving from the village to the city i was different because i  know how poor we where on till i got to the city when i actually saw kids like myself who are not super wealthy but it will live in a way where i had never seen before so i was in total shock me ask you this what is wealthy to you in god well wolfy to me is being able to our being able to provide have the basic necessity of of life like food like water like having shelter having a place back home you know just the basic necessity of of life where was scarce was that you had something good happen to you though and it was soccer has something very good harbor for me you know when i was growing up when i was a boy or five years old i knew exactly what i want to do in life and that was become a professional soccer player i discovered my gift at a very young age that i was born to play soccer and then and then speak so hard those two give and literally soccer took over my life  and actually come back in support my family so so because it was big when i was growing up did you go to school well if i could tell by a whole story is i was in school books because i discover soccer school became a problem for me i didn't want to go to school anymore because i would go out and i'll play the game till it's very very dark ah before i come back home and and when i discover so i just i literally didn't want to do anything else  and in fact i started playing what we call back home joints to which means you do you have been a bad boy i don't want to go to school in fact my purse with think thought i was in school but i will you know run away with my friends and i'll go and play soccer for a while before i come home and actually my parents i figured out that my teachers called home or were like what's wrong with michael he hasn't been coming to school and when they found out that i wasn't going to school they brought me home and you know instead of me apologizing you you know go back home and and apologize and i was actually die a day when i got our poll just a dem and it was the same day that i heard on the news that it was this soccer academy and they're doing a trial for kids who  before we forget about you you are writing a book right now i'm writing a book right now as we speak is going to be released october the tenth two thousand and four two thousand and fourteen absolutely my mentor john knox will is doing the leadership simulcast and he goes on one of well all right so we will make sure that if we can get a copy of the cover by the time that the show gets out there we will put it up there as well but regardless will it people know they can go to the one kingdom of our nation website and then they can find out for me to take on a taxi today training field so i had to run two hours to do tryouts and when i got there it was about five hundred kids that showed up or you know hungry to you know to make  to play soccer professionally we don't want to do anything but talk a book coach wanted us to get education us also to mix the education and the soccer together by really literally we were there because we want to become obvious of the players and while we were th i say it's a struggle because sometimes you know we'll go play a game where we don't play very well and there were several times where our coach would get pretty upset with us and so we had to work extremely extremely hard because you didn't win and then they wouldn't fit joe yeah difficult and if if i'll be honest yes it was it was difficult we we we play games where we don't we didn't do very well on it were times where we could eat and and and some of some guys us that it with  and so in fact how i got to come to america was we're playing against the university of ghana with thirteen fourteen year olds and we're playing against you know there's all the guys and i would beat him and because you know we've been together for a long time and and while we're there was actually a coach from santa barbara who came to do recruiting at a university and he saw the game and i was confused like what is happening here and so after the game he came and spoke to our coach who what is spoke to a coach and then they gives scholarship to two of my friends who actually were the first people that came to america first and they were phenomenal they literally transformed the whole school just with the attitude with who the where about america you know i had my friends you could you speak english i could speak very good english factor when i came they thought i was from england because we used to live with a bunch of british people that came to the academy would travel with them so my english was pretty good  arrive in america and you know i went through a whole culture shock where you know i got to l a in fact my first sight out of america was when i saw this girl running with a little to our would close on the dog and i literally  by you know ten years later i'm getting married to an american girl who was a cavalier king charles spaniel and sheep clothes and a dog and i find myself walking dead all so you know well what were some  the other things that were culture shock for you just the high school that i went to the kids how to pay close to fifty thousand dollars a year to go to school my goodness they were driving cars where i was telling my friends oh my word parents will probably never drive a call like that just the wealth and just the environment and just the gravity of how much stuff people had a voice it blew my mind i couldn't believe it and one of the things was that was the probably the biggest shock that i had that experience because it didn't make sense to me that up there were people in my country who are struggling to get food to eat and here in that in this environment where  food is everything around eyes and people were throwing it away so that was a big culture shock for me so you went on you played soccer in high school you got your eyes closed cation a college like to you and your plates are there for them and i'm sorry that i'm fast forwarding but you got to get to the absolutely and then you went on to play professional soccer and then i went on to clipper business or when i was you know i got a scholarship to go to college you know while i was in college you know i got the generation ideas with a program where go of the game because i have discovered what it is that i'm supposed to do for the rest of my life and an hour and i let go of the game to focus on my vision of you know building a leadership school in you don't want children to be living in mud huts or on the streets of a crime when i grew up one of the things that i discover what was an vironment is the key to life and when i was growing up instead of us going to school we had to walk miles to get water we had to help our parents are to feed to put food on the table and so when you are in that poverty and byrom and you become constricted by what immediate because you look around you and all you see is poverty and you don't have the ability you don't get the ability to see your future and if you don't have a vision where there's no vision people perish and if we don't have a village we'll have the ability to see your future to dream you end up being poor for the rest of your life and so deschooling it to you know it's a board in leadership school where we want to take kids from the environment of poverty into an environment where they wouldn't have to  ghana i absolutely believe that because i look i look around now there are kids who came from ghana to america and today i see then i'm like if this can happen to every single kid in africa every single key in the world they would become a better place we need to provide good enviro meant for our youth and that's what's like in in my country there is a theory that poverty fuels  often and actually young people in poverty are prey to terrorists did that thought ever cross your mind or did you have friends that talked about that and maybe you know hey there's a way out of poverty how it does go join this group the thought never crossed my mind even though i knew that was going on you know back in my country my country went through slavery oppression coal and isolation back in time where where where  knew we knew that but i was very stubborn i i knew i discovered who i really was at a very very young age ah any came through you know my feet is huge in everything that i do and so that actually protected me went when the academy i met a guy today start with the school you're building muscle is that right now you already have the land right we have a sixty two acres of land to do the project yes fantastic so you're in the process of raising funds to build it absolutely there it's going to be a boarding school is there right is going to be a boarding school is going to be a boarding school why is that important like like we just took the boy it's very very important because i believe you look you know you look at the environment of poverty the struggle there is people don't get to for focus on what they are really good at because you are struggling to put food on the table your parents kids are walking in a mad house to fetch water and so if we can get them out of that environment into a place where they come and live are they don't have to worry about anything else by just focus on our education focus on discovering your true purpose in life focus on the a gift in the talent are there womb make a positive to do to us and i believe nothing happens with all the ship nothing improves with our leadership nothing changes with our leadership our country is lacking true leadership and so i believe we can gro generation of youth coming up where they are trained in what true leadership is our country's will become a better place is the school for boys and girls schools for boys and girls and that is a huge huge thing because the government or the world lords and everything the people that were able to stop the civil war with a bunch of moms their way to stop civil war and i believe we can give more opportunities to girls our countries will become a project to come and so it's been great actually to to get the support from the community there you know chief i've gone back to ghana several times and has presented it to the chiefs in my country and you know that's one thing to do is ch my country own the land and everything and i believe we can empower them who can empower them to really understand what true leadership is and how to serve the people we would do great things in my in my country and so  and so we're working on now is getting it so that it's self sustaining so the kids don't have to worry about anything the academy that i went to i didn't have to pay to go to i had to bring you was because of my gift and my talent that got me there and i think it's important that on that i also provide us in if students are learning then how is going to be self sustaining so as the board and the leadership of the overall of this school as we discuss and right now is we coming up with different ways to make sure that we can get it to the point so that conversation is to go and have a lot o different people want to boy to walk how are we going to get a stain if the kids in the thing but i absolutely believe there's a way for us to do it and we're having that conversation right now we we have less than a minute left of the show five years from now and you were sitting back again at this very table and  ask you this question have if you do what would you say five years from now we'll have a thriving school where kids obgyn inspired and college to really discover who do you really are to make an impact in the world five years from now i'll be youth and speak all of what it was and you know how the family you know i'm getting married obviously getting married in august i have a family and you know my wife and i will be i will be traveling and speaking she is a another great speaker and so we see us of traveling and speaking and really