Go Play PoloThe water belongs to everyone.
Go Play Polo is a 501(c)(3) built on one stubborn idea: that no one should be kept out of the water by cost, by geography, or by never being taught. Six years in, we have never charged a cent to play.
A doctor who never left the water.
Dr. Zain Vally has been playing competitive water polo for nearly forty years, and he still competes, traveling the world for international masters tournaments from Japan and Norway to Ireland and South Africa.
By profession he is a physician. He leads Vally Medical Group, an occupational medicine practice across four Hawaiian islands, where he spends his days treating people whose bodies have been hurt. That work gives him a particular clarity about how fragile the body is in water, and how much of the danger is preventable.
He grew up in South Africa, where he saw what it means when whole communities never get the chance to learn to swim. He lives in Hawaii now, where the ocean is part of daily life and the stakes of not knowing the water are real. Between those two places sits the whole reason this foundation exists: water skill should not be a privilege. It should start young, and it should be available to everyone.
Water skill should not be a privilege. It should start young, and it should be available to everyone.
It started with a free app.
Go Play Polo began as a simple, free app to unite a scattered water polo community: find a scrimmage, a tournament, or a social happening near you, and show up. We have never charged for the app, for any feature, or for a single moment of play.
That free principle grew into a tournament. Every year for six years, teams from across the country have met at the Kona Pier on the Big Island for open-water polo in the Hawaiian ocean. Men, women, and youth of every skill level. No entry fee, ever.
The dream behind it is bigger than one pier: a water polo community connected across the world, and a sport that opens the water to people instead of gatekeeping it.
We have never charged anyone. We never will.
Free app. Free features. Free to play, for everyone. That is not a promotion. It is the whole point.
We have the community. Now we build water safety.
Here is the honest truth: in six years we have built a community, a tournament, and an app, but we have not yet taught a single child to swim. That is the next thing we are building, and it does not exist until it is funded.
Drowning is the leading cause of death for children ages 1 to 4 in the United States, and the burden falls hardest on those who never had access to a pool. We want to change that, starting with the first swim and water-safety program in our history. Your support is what puts the first coach on the first deck.Source: U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Where your money goes.
Go Play Polo is a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit. To date, we have raised approximately $35,000, and those funds have gone toward building the free app and promoting water polo and the foundation worldwide. We are a lean, founder-led organization, which means more of every dollar goes to the mission and less to overhead.
As we grow, our next chapter, water safety and swim instruction, is exactly what new donations are raised to launch.
501(c)(3) Nonprofit · EIN 33-4244255 · Tax-deductible