By Peninah Nthenya Musyimi | Safe Spaces Director
Background
Basketball, one of the cornerstones of Safe Spaces, began in the days when Peninah herself was struggling to find a way to pay for her education. Years before she became director of Safe Spaces, she found a coach, learned the game in one month, succeeded at basketball trials, and made it to university. Today, basketball scholarships continue to be available for both secondary school and university. Competition is fierce, but if successful, each girl can earn her own ticket to school.Safe Spaces has two teams: a junior and a senior one. The girls play competitively against other Nairobi teams. They get an opportunity to win basketball scholarships, which funds their education.
Basketball and Life Skills
In December 2017 and in December 2018, Safe Spaces was invited to send its best young players (13-14 years old) to the Kenyan National Basketball trials, in Mombasa, in order to compete for four-year scholarships to premiere boarding schools around the country. All participating girls were successful: 9 in 2017 and 13 in 2018. Through basketball, Safe Spaces can support more girls in pursuing their education.
To achieve more structural success, Safe Spaces has kicked off a three-year project to strengthen the Basketball and Life Skills program, called Building the Talent Pipeline.
This project addresses the 3 goals of Safe Spaces:
-Educate: girls are taught basketball skills in combination with relevant life and job skills, develop their team work and leadership competencies to improve their prospects of work and their self-sufficiency.
-Engage: girls build relationships within the team, with external stakeholders (schools and sponsors) via tournaments and the Nairobi Basketball League. The tournaments create visibility for the girls, and attract possible scholarships with secondary schools and/or universities.
-Empower: by integrating Life Skills with Sports, the program stimulates a philosophy of “A Healthy Body makes a Healthy Mind”. Safe Spaces girls develop a strong sense of self: leadership, determination, competition, teamwork. Empowered, they learn to perform under pressure, make decisions, and lead their own lives.
On top of that, Safe Spaces has hired a local coach and team manager to manage equipment and logistics, train the teams (1st team, 2nd team, basic skills), and build the talent pipeline of scholarship candidates. For the near future, SS would like to invest in maintenance of the basketball court and equipment and overall basketball court renovation.
Applying the Safe Spaces Peer Educator philosophy encourages the girls, as they learn, to help others and ultimately become trainers. Doing community outreach makes schools/employers seeking basketball players aware of the Safe Spaces talent pool.
Basketball performance
Safe Spaces’ 1st team won the 2017 NBA league championship and the prize for Season Top Scorer and the prize for Most Free Throws throughout the season. In addition to personal pride and team spirit, winning the championship generated national publicity and community pride.
The 2nd team was invited to send 9 players to the National Basketball trials in 2017 and 13 in 2018. All of them were awarded four-year scholarships. This achievement impacts the girls’ families in a positive way and shows the community that investing in a sport can improve your prospects for a better life.
Safe Spaces basketball project has created life-changing opportunities for 20 girls to date. The National Basketball trials as a perfect opportunity for Safe Spaces to send more girls to better schools, with a positive financial impact on our program and a much greater benefit for the community.
We hope to continue the project in 2019. This is subject to funding.
How to help further
We are extremely proud of our girls who became champion of their league in December 2017.
If you are interested in making it possible for the girls to keep winning on the basketball court and at school, please consider donating. We are looking for sponsors to help secure the renovation of the basketball court: it needs to be resurfaced. The girls always need new basketballs to practice and proper sport attire (shoes!) in the beautiful blue and white colors.
To donate: click hereor go to http://www.safespaces-nairobi.org
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