World Vision Puts Steelers Preprinted Merchandise to Good Use

The Super Bowl is over, and the Pittsburgh Steelers' loss means impoverished people in other nations soon will gain some items that fans of the football team would have loved to wear.

Thanks to World Vision and the NFL, preprinted shirts, sweatshirts and hats that would have been distributed to tout a Steelers victory in Super Bowl XLV soon will be shipped out to countries in need.

Volunteers at World Vision, a Christian humanitarian organization in , have been preparing the shipment of Steelers Super Bowl merchandise for shipment to Zambia, Armenia, Romania, and Nicaragua. One hundred pallets, or $2 million of merchandise ,will be sent to people in the countries.

“We’ve been working with the NFL for over 15 years and [that cooperation] continues to grow every year,” said Jeff Fields, World Vision's corporate relations senior director.

The preprinted merchandise comes from major sports retailers who make plans in advance for a victory by  both teams, Fields said.  It also includes pre-produced NFL gear made in advance at the Super Bowl site. Merchandise that inaccurately touts a victory by the losing team is donated to World Vision.

“Nobody is allowed to put Super Bowl merchandise out on their shelves until a winner is determined, and everyone wants to be the first to have the merchandise ready,” Fields said. “Unfortunately, in this case, it wasn’t Green Bay merchandise we received, which we would have, had they lost.”

V olunteers sort the Steelers merchandise by size so a child in another country does not end up with a shirt that is too large or cannot be worn.

“We sort not only by size, but by climate so as to make sure anything we send to another country is put to 100 percent good use,” he said. “Everything we send is also of the highest quality, and we have people on the ground in other countries who know what the needs are, so no piece of merchandise goes to waste.”

With Sewickley home to one of its two international distribution facilities, World Vision has been providing aid to those in need for 60 years. It also has eight domestic sites and serves people within the United States as well.

World Vision receives donations from all sports leagues and recently received a shipment of New York Jets AFC Championship winners’ merchandise, which was printed before that team lost to the Steelers. Volunteers also sorted and readied that merchandise for shipment to other countries.

World Vision plans to team with a new organization, "Pros for Africa," a group made up of mostly NFL players, to personally deliver some of the Steelers merchandise in Uganda. NFL players involved include Arizona Cardinals Larry Fitzgerald, who played for University of Pittsburgh. Their joint trip to Uganda is planned for March.