10 | PENTA | December 2020
Stephen and Ayesha Curry:
Changing Children’s Lives in
The Bay Area and Beyond
In 2019, the star couple launched
Eat. Learn. Play. with a focus on nutrition,
education, and physical activity
E
ven before the Covid-19 pan-
demic hit, food insecurity
was an evolving crisis in
Oakland, Calif. The Alameda
County Community Food
Bank served one of five citizens in the
area, and one-third of those were chil-
dren and seniors. As the coronavirus
took its toll, with more parents out of
work and children at home—18,000
kids in Oakland relied on school meals
for two to three meals daily, according to
the Oakland Unified School District—a
monumental challenge was unfolding in
the Bay Area.
Golden State Warriors star Stephen
Although their organization is rela-
tively new, the Currys, who have three
children, ages 2 through 8, have been
giving back in the Bay Area since the
couple began calling it home over a
decade ago, after Stephen was picked
seventh in the 2009 NBA draft by the
Warriors, which played in Oakland at
the time. (The team moved into a new
stadium in San Francisco in 2019.)
Stephen has since become a transcen-
dent superstar—a lightning quick point
guard with an automatic three-point
shot—winning three NBA champion-
ships and two league MVP awards.
Meanwhile, the Canadian-born Ayesha
has appeared in films and television,
hosted a cooking show on the Food
Network, and authored a cookbook.
That kind of success has given the
Currys the opportunity to make a real
difference in their Bay Area community.
“We were both raised under the idea
that giving back and taking care of the
community is vitally important, and
now with the resources and platform we
are both so blessed to have, we can do
that in a big way,” Stephen says. “Start-
ing a foundation wasn’t something we
decided to do overnight. Ayesha and I
had both been involved in many import-
ant causes for the last 10-plus years, and
in that time learned so much from so
many people. But we had always been
excited by the idea of doing something
together, and the exponential impact
that could create.”
The Currys decided to focus their
philanthropy on children, with the aim
of giving local kids a chance at a better
life. “As we are parents ourselves, we see
the unique opportunities our kids have
access to,” Ayesha says. “Our hope is that
Eat. Learn. Play., and the critical funda-
mental development tools it provides,
will positively impact children in our
community to live out their dreams.”
The foundation has adopted a multi-
pronged approach to benefiting local
Curry, 32, and his wife, the actress,
television personality, and cookbook
author Ayesha Curry, 31, stepped in to
help. The couple had an existing rela-
tionship with the food bank through
their organization Eat. Learn. Play.,
which was founded in July 2019 to focus
on what Ayesha describes as “three vital
pillars of a healthy childhood—nutri-
tion, education, and physical activity.”
The Currys mobilized their foundation
to help provide daily meals for 24,000
students and their families during the
pandemic. Eat. Learn. Play. and its part-
ners have served more than 11.3 million
meals in Oakland to date.
Left: Stephen and Ayesha Curry’s Eat.
Learn. Play. and its partners have
served more than 11.3 million meals in
Oakland, Calif., to date.
“ Children are
our future,
and we
are deeply
dedicated to
empowering
them.”
Stephen
Curry
By MITCH MOXLEY