Slums Dunk Odv
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Mission Statement
We involve children and teenagers from fragile contexts from different areas of the world, in inclusive Basketball Academy. We build partnerships and support local partners, making basketball available to integrated paths for the development of life skills and community empowerment. We make abandoned or neglected spaces accessible by transforming them into playgrounds open to the local community, in which to practice sports, educational and inclusive activities.
About This Cause
Slums Dunk is a non-profit association whose mission is to use basketball to improve the living conditions of children and young people living in highly deprived contexts in Kenya, Zambia, Argentina, from 2021 in Italy and in 2022 in Cambodia. The name comes from an alteration of the word SLAM DUNK (the English term used to indicate the dunk gesture in basketball) where the term SLAM is replaced by the word SLUM (to indicate the Nairobi Slums where the association was born). The name therefore includes both the main place of intervention of the association, the slums, but above all the instrument used: basketball. The idea was born in 2011 by two professional basketball player Bruno Cerella and Tommaso Marino. WHAT WE DO The first Basketball Academy came to life in 2014 in Nairobi inside the Mathare Slum, with the reclamation of an area then used for the construction of a real basketball court, by choice not fenced and left as a meeting point and reference for the community. Mathare is the second largest slum in Nairobi (Kenya) by extension and among the significant data it sees a population density of around 95,000 people per 1.5 square km, with little access to goods such as running water, electricity and health facilities. . Following the construction of the field, local boys were involved and started training as basketball coaches. All this was possible thanks to the members / volunteers of the association, professional basketball coaches, who together with Bruno and Tommaso, have dedicated time each year to undertake this journey of transmitting their skills, to the Mathare boys who are today at all effects of professional coaches. The Basketball Academies of Kenya (Nairobi and Kisumu) currently involve about 500 children and young people (both boys and girls) aged 6 to 18. Since 2016 Slums Dunk has launched the first Basketball Academy in Zambia, in Ndola, also here guaranteeing sports activities, education and health assistance to about 200 children and young people from the centers of Nkwazi and Misundu, thanks to the collaboration with the partner rooted in the territory it deals precisely with reintegrating street children into a school / educational path (Chichetekelo Youth Project). Here sport therefore becomes an essential ally to allow the children of Ndola to grow up according to positive values and developing those fundamental relational skills to be able to build a future different from the one they unfortunately seem too often destined for. OUR APPROACH The pillars of the association are therefore: basketball, Life Skills education, rehabilitation of sports infrastructure, health. This is possible thanks to the partnership with realities rooted in the territories in which Slums Dunk operates, where basketball can act as a connector and access channel to infrastructures, educational paths and support for the health education of the children who live in the slum. All this without making gender discrimination, indeed by enhancing the sporting practice of girls and girls, so that sport gives them the opportunity to experiment and develop decisive skills for their emancipation path. RESULTS An important aspect of Slums Dunk's activity in Kenya is that of scholarships for sporting merit obtained by as many as 50 boys from the Mathare basketball Academy. Thanks to the quality sport they have played in recent years, they have been able to continue their studies by accessing various high schools in the city of Nairobi, an experience otherwise impossible given the country's private school system and therefore inaccessible for families. 2021 MILANO PLAYGROUND Milan: Playground Stelvio The "PlayGround Stelvio: sport and community" project acts for social and urban regeneration through an element that Slums Dunk believes to be among the major promoters of inclusion: sport, and basketball, as "community health" devices. Slums Dunk Onlus, after gaining experience of how basketball can be an educational and inclusive tool in contexts of extreme vulnerability such as the slums of countries in the southern hemisphere, wants to intervene and experiment with its own model also in its city: Milan. Sport for the development of the community therefore becomes the center of this intervention which starts from a structural regeneration, with a makeover of the space identified among the requests of the Municipality of Milan and continues with a socio-educational intervention aimed at the young people of the neighborhood. The two interventions go hand in hand, the renovation is essential to make the spaces welcoming and captivating for the young inhabitants of the neighborhood. On the other hand, those positive reference adult figures who can engage the kids orbiting the area with unstructured sporting/ludic proposals aimed at creating a sense of belonging, an inclusive and safe climate, are fundamental. In addition to the educational aspects dedicated to young people, PlayGround Stelvio promotes moments of aggregation aimed at the community in general, milestones in which to enhance the association's ambassadors, basketball champions, at the service of young people in transmitting the values that sport teaches, fundamental for the development of future active citizens at the service of the community.