How basketball creates change, hope and inspires individuals in
parts of the world where it’s needed
XI’AN – Basketball is more than just a game, something that is being proved over and over in countries all around the world. It is a sport, yes, but it is more than that. It changes lives.
The social impact of basketball is undeniable. That was a topic of a panel discussion at last month’s FIBA World Basketball Summit in China.
Karen Doubilet, the Managing Director of PeacePlayers International, gave stirring opening remarks about how basketball is making a positive impact on children in Israel.
“I think the best example of how we use sport for social impact is looking at the city of Jerusalem where we have Palestinian and Israeli children – they live literally across the road from one another – and they have absolutely no opportunity for positive interaction, which means they know each other only through media, through myth and through what’s passed down through their families and through their education system,” she said.
“(But) Everyone speaks the language of basketball. Everyone can meet as equals on the basketball court. So what we do is use basketball to try and create a space where people can get to know each other, see the humanity in one another, build friendships, change attitudes, change behaviors. We’re also using the sport to instill psychological resources like self-confidence and leadership skills so that the participants can grow up and become effective agents for change in their communities.”
Florian Wanninger, representing FIBA’s Foundation, the International Basketball Foundation (IBF), reminded everyone of the very powerful words of Nelson Mandela.
“What does it mean social impact? I always use a quote from Nelson Mandela: ‘Sport has the power to change the world. It has the power to unite people in the way that little else does. It speaks to youth in the language that they understand,'” he said. “We have this unique opportunity to use sport for development, not only develop sport, but use sport for development.”
Caroline Baxter, a sports policy specialist with UNESCO, was also on hand in Xi’an and agreed that basketball is uniquely positioned to make a social impact.
“It’s an amazing tool,” she said. “It has a convening power, it can reach diverse segments of society that traditionally might be hard to reach for various factors of exclusion. So that could be people living in hard-to-reach places, small islands, it can be people that are excluded, they might be females in a society where females aren’t allow to participate. We can leverage its power.”
Sport, Doubilet went on, has a tremendous power to transcend all types of barriers because “whether it’s socioeconomics, gender, national, religious, whether you are Jewish, Protestant, Muslim, Catholic, we all play basketball according to the same rules.”
“Specifically among Palestinians and Israelis, I want to mention that basketball is the number one sport for women so it has a tremendous power to engage 50 percent of our society which is often left on the sidelines. Basketball is a game where all five players have to share the ball, they have to work together, they need great communication, trust. If we want to win the game, we have to work together so that makes it a very, very powerful tool for peace building.”
The game also reaches a key target demography – the youth.
“Basketball appeals to youngsters,” Wanninger said. “I think it’s one of those sports that will grow in urban areas where we face the challenges we want to tackle. We are a team sport, so you can only be successful if you work as a team. We always try to promote 3×3 basketball. In grassroots basketball, you do not have referees. So when you play the game and you commit the foul, you have to confess the foul as an attacking player which is something that help us achieve our objectives.”
“I ALWAYS USE A QUOTE FROM NELSON MANDELA: ‘SPORT HAS THE POWER TO CHANGE THE WORLD. IT HAS THE POWER TO UNITE PEOPLE IN THE WAY THAT LITTLE ELSE DOES. IT SPEAKS TO YOUTH IN THE LANGUAGE THAT THEY UNDERSTAND.'”
Wanninger was also keen to stress the importance of grassroots basketball.
“At FIBA, in our membership, our national federations, I think we have a tendency to focus on elite sports,” he said. “That’s one of our most important roles because every country wants to be competitive and win something.
“But we have to promote this other element that we can use sports in another way, by investing in grassroots. I know many of our member federations are doing this already. One of our principles is, whenever we do projects, we like to involve the federations and use the projects to help develop the federations.”
There is also a need, Doubilet said, for everyone in the sport to keep working hard and do so together.
“Basketball has incredible power that we need to leverage, both in the public and private sector – FIBA and the NBA, the non-governmental organizations (NGOs),” she said. “We need to work together to scale up our impact to increase what we are doing.
“Funding is a major challenge that all of us face. What we are doing works, and I have empirical data that it works. We cannot stop what we are doing.”