THE WOMAN WITH THE SUITCASE FULL OF PADDLES
Susan Swern of the Pickleball for Good Fund travelled through East Africa with 58 paddles, 54 balls, and a mission to reach the continent’s most remote courts. By the time she landed back in Colorado, the last of her equipment had arrived in Madagascar.
By Capt. Collins Munene, Africa Correspondent
She arrived with a suitcase. Inside it: 58 paddles, 54 balls, portable nets, and instructional materials, enough to spark a pickleball community from scratch. Susan Swern, Founder and Board President of the Pickleball for Good Fund, had come to East Africa not to watch from the sidelines but to get equipment into players’ hands, personally, one country at a time.
Her tour took her through Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, and South Africa, testing new models for sustainable equipment distribution, building relationships with local clubs, and leaving behind far more than gear. And just as she touched down back in Colorado, word came through: the last shipment had reached Madagascar, the farthest point on the entire route. The mission was complete.
PHILANTHROPY, PICKLEBALL, AND THE PLANET
Known affectionately as Dinkerbell, Susan Swern has spent nearly four decades in nonprofit fundraising. She founded the Pickleball for Good Fund as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit built around three convictions: that pickleball can transform communities, that it should be accessible to all regardless of income or geography, and that the sport has a responsibility to the planet it is played on. Her motto, “No Planet, No Pickleball”, is not just a catchphrase. It underpins every decision the organisation makes.
The Fund’s flagship programme, Operation PaddleLift, is a collaborative global campaign launched jointly with the Global Pickleball Federation (GPF), the Good Sport Foundation, and Franklin Sports. Its goal: deliver full equipment kits to GPF member countries where the passion for pickleball exists but access to gear does not. Each kit contains 36 Franklin X-40 pickleballs, 20 paddles, and 4 portable nets, everything needed to turn a schoolyard, parking lot, or community space into four functioning courts. When CAP reached out, the fit was immediate. Africa had the energy and the players. What it needed was equipment.
HOW THE EQUIPMENT MOVED
Susan’s first stop was Kenya, and it was here that the operation took on its full scale. The gear she had carried in her suitcase was consolidated in Nairobi with a significant stockpile of equipment that had already been awaiting distribution, paddles, balls, and nets contributed by donors and partners, held at a compounding point, ready to move. Kenya became the hub: the place where everything gathered before fanning out across the region.
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From Nairobi, the equipment was dispatched in stages. Uganda received its allocation. Rwanda followed. The Seychelles, an island nation building its pickleball community with limited resources and vast ocean distances to navigate, got its share. And then, finally, Madagascar: separated from the African continent by the waters of the Indian Ocean, and the last stop on a chain of distribution that stretched across an entire region. When those paddles and balls arrived on Malagasy soil, a small but significant chapter in the story of African pickleball had been written.
Susan was back in Colorado by then. But the ripple effect of what she had set in motion was still travelling.
PICKLEBALL FOR THE PEOPLE
Operation PaddleLift sits at the heart of CAP’s Pickleball for the People programme, a continent-wide initiative born from the closing ceremony of the 13th African Games in Accra, Ghana, where CAP President Dr. Kwabena Dautey Akufo declared that pickleball must reach every home, village, town, and city across Africa, not just the clubs and the privileged few. Dr. Akufo has spoken directly to how transformative equipment access can be: “Our push for grassroots development of pickleball in Ghana has been limited due to equipment. When the Ghana Pickleball Association received GPF member kits, we were enabled to expand to more regions in Ghana that will help us in our drive toward formal recognition by the Ministry of Sports.”
The Pickleball for the People programme deploys Ambassadors from active pickleball countries into regions where the sport has not yet taken root, each carrying a Mission Kit with paddles, balls, nets, and instructional booklets. Susan’s East Africa operation was this model at scale: equipment compounded, distributed, and absorbed into communities that had been waiting for exactly this kind of support. As GPF Community Development Committee Chair Ruth Rosenquist puts it, the joint effort is designed to “close the gap while supporting pickleball’s long-term international growth a critical step toward the sport’s future on the world stage and as an official Olympic sport.”
CHAMPION A COUNTRY: AFRICA IS WAITING
The scale of the need across Africa is real and documented. Operation PaddleLift’s “Champion a Country” programme offers donors the opportunity to fund a full equipment kit delivery to a specific country for $1,000 — covering shipping, customs, and import fees that can often cost more than the gear itself. A single donation, one country lifted.
Among the countries currently in the queue, waiting patiently for a kit, are ten African nations: the Democratic Republic of Congo, Lesotho, Madagascar, Tanzania, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Cameroon, Egypt, Benin, Zimbabwe, Kenya, South Africa, Rwanda, and Tunisia. These are not abstract names on a list. They are communities with players ready to learn, coaches ready to teach, and courts ready to be drawn — if only the equipment arrives.
The Pickleball for Good Fund is now working to raise $20,000 to sustain and scale this momentum. There are three ways to get involved: donate any amount at pickleballforgood.org; Champion a Country with a $1,000 kit donation; donate paddles and portable nets in good condition by contacting rrosenquist@globalpickleballfederation.org; or purchase “Life Lessons in Pickleball” on Amazon for $12.99, with all proceeds going directly to Operation PaddleLift.
TEACH HER SOMETHING AFRICAN
During her tour, CAP extended a warm invitation to every club and community Susan visited: teach her something African. ‘Show her how the game is played here. Share the culture of the court.’ The request captured something important about what this partnership is really about. It is not a one-way transfer from north to south. It is an exchange. The equipment travels one way; the energy, the joy, and the community that pickleball creates across Africa travel right back.
By the time Susan Swern boarded her flight home, paddles were being strung across Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, the Seychelles, and Madagascar. Back on her home court in Colorado, Dinkerbell will know that somewhere on the other side of the world, a child is picking up a paddle for the very first time because she showed up with a suitcase.
HOW TO SUPPORT OPERATION PADDLELIFT
- Donate (any amount): pickleballforgood.org
- Champion a Country: $1,000 delivers a full kit to a country of your choice
- Donate Equipment: rrosenquist@globalpickleballfederation.org
- Buy the Book: “Life Lessons in Pickleball” — $12.99 on Amazon. All proceeds to Operation PaddleLift.
- Partner with CAP: secgen@confederationofafricanpickleball.org
WhatsApp: +254 718 041 037
Read more: Follow World Pickleball Magazine News, explore tournaments, and track the wider growth of the game across Africa.
Chris Beaumont is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of World Pickleball Magazine. Chris follows the global game closely, reporting on the latest news, developments, stories and tournaments from all five continents. He also hosts the World Pickleball Podcast, interviewing people at all levels of pickleball. Chris is also an avid player, currently struggling to make the breakthrough from 4.0 to 4.5.