Jonathan Babineaux is the Atlanta Falcons‘ star defensive tackle, a NFC South Champ and one of the Falcons’ veteran team captains.
But Babineaux is more than one of the NFL’s best defensive linemen. Instead of resting on his one day off during the NFL season and off-season, he performs volunteer or community service projects. He has donated approximately $100K of his personal money to numerous charities and foundations in Atlanta and his hometown of Port Arthur, Texas.
The NFL history-maker has issued a challenge to Atlanta Falcons’ fans to collect 95 aluminum bottles and cans. Ninety-five is Babineaux’s team number.
Babineaux will personally thank each fan who collects 95 aluminum used beverage cans. He’s an advocate for the Recycle for Good, a campaign by Novelis, the world’s leader in aluminum rolling and recycling. Recycle for Good hopes to collect 3M cans to fund and build a Habitat for Humanity home in Atlanta’s historic Westside community.
Fans can bring their cans to the Bud Light tailgate located in Lot N on Northside Drive during the remaining Atlanta Falcons home game – aluminum cans and aluminum bottles only. Bring aluminum cans and enter to win Super Bowl tickets. Fans who also bring 95 aluminum cans and bottles and bottles – #95 will personally thank after the game.
Babineaux became a concerned supporter of Novelis’ Recycle for Good initiative when he learned that Georgians throw away $70M of aluminum every year and was inspired by the thought that the $70 million could be recycled and re-purposed to invest in our communities. In North America, $1.5B of aluminum goes into landfills each year.
In Atlanta, Babineaux has donated to more than 95 community and non-profit organizations. He chooses organizations that provide assistance to Atlanta’s communities who have unique needs or experience hardship to help raise awareness for that group’s fundraising or volunteer needs. Babineaux uses his donations to make a lasting impact in the lives of less fortunate children. Babineaux is the first NFL star to take blind, visually-impaired and deaf children to experience their first NFL game – an Atlanta Falcons game.
Since September 2008, Babineaux has been giving Atlanta Falcons home game tickets and custom-made Atlanta Falcons/”Babineaux’s Unit” t-shirts to charities, foundations, at-risk schools and non-profit organizations that serve the medically fragile or underserved adults and children of Atlanta.
As a graduate of a public school in Texas, Jonathan knows first-hand how important school is. Graduating high school and college is the only way he got a job in the NFL as a professional football player. As such, he is very concerned about students who don’t go to school and how this will affect their lives in the future.
To raise awareness of the truancy problem in schools and help improve student attendance, Babineaux implemented a “Stop Truancy” school tour two years ago and spent time with students at various Atlanta Public Schools. He gave the Jonathan Babineaux Award to a student who improved her school attendance.
