For the last six days, I have had the tremendous pleasure of working with 50 young basketball players from Greece and Norway (we should have had additionally 20 youths from Spain but because the grown crew at Lufthansa and the management could not communicate well enough, a strike hindered their participation).
We are in this capacity, Sport4Understanding, our family’s NGO.
Our theme, ‘One for all, and all for one,’ echoed throughout our exchange, guiding us through engaging communication sessions, immersive cultural experiences, and unforgettable bonding moments. We had dynamic workshops and exhilarating basketball games – every moment was a testament to the power of teamwork and collaboration.
In projects such as this, we want to develop the impact through essential life skills – exploring the nuances of body language and active listening through interactive exercises like “speed dating” where we raise awareness of the important skills of small talk, sharing, and caring about others with the curiosity of asking open-ended questions and practice on being present to others.
When using the youths’ current basketball skills, the project raises awareness and develops their interpersonal skills.
We see this as our part of the EU Commission‘s message of 22 May 2018, which is
to promote youth participation in social life and community involvement.
Part of our goal is to ensure that the engaging and enthusiastic mentors we teach will develop to become tomorrow’s managers on and off the courts. They are again developing our youth participants and helping them see hope for the future, self-understanding, empathy, to be able to see sport as a strength to develop oneself, and through strength they develop discipline to become who they want to be.
The project wants to have the impact that through sport young people can grow and develop into independent individuals which they can use in almost any activity they want to do later in life.