Lions OT Gio Manu helps build Tonga school: 'Amazing' what NFL can do

It happened frequently when Gio Manu was growing up in Tonga.

School would close for days or sometimes weeks at a time. During monsoon season. For hurricanes and tsunamis and earthquakes. Buildings would flood and the education system would come to a halt.

One time, when he was about 8, the Detroit Lions ’ third-year offensive lineman recalls, a tree fell during a storm and crushed the library of the school he attended. He returned to school a few days later, but the library was shuttered for repairs.

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“There’d be days when sometimes school has to be shut down because the rain would just flood the whole entire school and it could go on and be weeks,” Manu said. “And it’s hard because then it impacts those kids trying to see friends, see each other, go back to school.”

With his own experiences in mind, Manu partnered with the nonprofit organization Friends of Tonga to help build a weather-resistant kindergarten in the village of Tu’anuku in Tonga’s northern island group. The school, which serves about 25 children, opened earlier this month.

Manu said he donated about $7,000 to the project, including about $3,000 that he raised through the auction of the cleats he had designed with the organization’s logo as part of the NFL’s My Cleats, My Cause program in 2024.

Michael Hassett, president of Friends of Tonga, said the project cost about $70,000 total and also included a donation from rugby star Charles Piutau, whose parents are natives of Tonga, an island kingdom in the south Pacific Ocean that is home to about 100,000 people.

Manu left Tonga when he was 11 to live with relatives in Canada, but still has family on the island, including his parents and some aunts, uncles and cousins.

He did not take part in the construction of the kindergarten, which was done by volunteers, but said he hopes to return to the island next offseason to lend a hand with other projects.

Unlike most schools in Tonga that are made from wood, Hassett said by email, the building Manu helped fund has a metal roof and beams with blocks and concrete for walls and floors. It was designed in conjunction with the nonprofit Schools For Children of the World, a group of structural engineers and architects who design schools meant to withstand natural disasters.

“Every time I go back home I always see those kids and I always see myself in their shoes,” Manu said. “It’s like we don’t have everything, we don’t have all the materials we need but it’s just a sense of like, every time I go back and see those kids it’s like if I have the chance to get them better I would. And I do.”

Manu, a fourth-round pick in 2024 who has played sparingly in his first two NFL seasons, said he has spent the past month in Cleveland training with private offensive line coach and former NFL center LeCharles Bentley in hopes of carving out a bigger role next season.

Dan Skipper, the Lions ’ longtime swing tackle, retired in January to go into coaching, and starting left tackle Taylor Decker remains undecided about his future.

Manu said he has not spoken this offseason with Decker, who trains out of Bentley’s Arizona facility.

“I think everyone’s just not trying to bring it up to him,” Manu said. “It is a very sensitive topic. I think we’re all just leaving it up to him. It’s his decision to make.”

Lions general manager Brad Holmes said Manu made strides in his second NFL season last fall but acknowledged, “I’m not going to sit here and say that we feel convicted that he’s ready to be a major contributor” yet.

“We hope that he is,” Holmes said in his end-of-season news conference in January. “We’re just going to have to see how he comes back in terms of when we get started in the offseason program, how he comes back in OTAs. And look, as always, he’s going to have to win a job. He’s going to have to beat somebody out. And so as much as we’re going to surround resources around him, he’s going to have to do his part, too, to make sure that he’s doing everything necessary to be as good of a football player that he can be.”

Manu, who missed about two months with a knee injury last season, said he started his offseason training in mid-January this year with the goal of “trying to be in better shape [and be] better overall as a player.”

“I’m preparing myself for whatever comes my way,” he said. “I started training, my offseason training, really early this year, just to – there’s a certain level of expectations I want to meet and to do that I got to start early. So that’s why I’m here.”

As for the school he helped build, Manu said he got "emotional" when dozens of people from back home reached out with thank-you text messages after the building opened and news of his support appeared in the local newspaper.

"Like I said, I always look at myself as those kids when I go back home and just looking at those kids play around and stuff, that’s everything to them and that’s how I was when I was a kid," he said. "If you told me as a kid being back home on the island that I was going to move 1,000 miles away from there and play football and be in the NFL, I would think you’re crazy. To see me finally being the bigger person I am today and giving back to those kids, it means a lot. And yeah, it is really appreciative of the journey, too. It’s amazing what this stage of the NFL can do for you and myself."

Dave Birkett covers the Lions for the Detroit Free Press. Contact him at  dbirkett@freepress.com . Follow him on  Bluesky ,  X  and  Instagram  at @davebirkett.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Lions OT Gio Manu helps build school in Tonga, ready for bigger role