The SOL Foundation continues and expands the current co-operation with PeacePlayers, using Basketball to create safe spaces for youth to learn to challenge conflict narratives and build lasting friendships across community divisions in the locations Middle East, South Africa, and Northern Ireland.
Problem to be tackled
Young people worldwide are facing an increasingly uncertain future marked by growing social and economic inequality, instability, and violence. These challenges manifest differently in each region, but their impact is profound.
In the Middle East, deep divisions separate Palestinians and Israelis, with language, religion, and culture creating formidable barriers. Limited opportunities for interaction result in a skewed perception of each other, fuelled by myths, media, and stereotypes, reinforcing fear, mistrust, and hatred, ultimately hindering progress toward peace.
In South Africa, the legacy of Apartheid persists, sustaining inequality, division, conflict, and disempowerment. The Apartheid regime legally entrenched inequality, uprooting non-white populations from their lands, and racially segregating all aspects of life, with a systemic divestment in services for non-whites, including education, infrastructure, and more.
In Northern Ireland, deep-seated divisions continue to exist, despite the progress made since the Good Friday Agreement. Society in Northern Ireland is often divided along neighbourhood, sports, political, and religious lines.
Based on the premise that “children who learn to play together can learn to live together,” PeacePlayers uses basketball as a tool to unite divided communities around the world, fostering positive relationships between people of diverse racial, cultural, and socio-economic backgrounds. Activities are complemented by the organisation’s peace education curriculum, which uses basketball drills, storytelling, and games to teach participants how to transform conflicts on their teams, at home and in their communities.
All PeacePlayers sites share a common objective: to proactively engage with underserved, disadvantaged, and marginalised communities, recognising the lack of leadership and skill development activities in these areas. They offer a structured framework to guide the development of underprivileged youth, including those from more conservative and traditionally hard to reach backgrounds often overlooked in peacebuilding and female empowerment initiatives, which often focus on intellectual elites.
With the continued support from the SOL Foundation, PeacePlayers International will be able to grant agency to the young people growing up with conflict, division, violence, and inequity in the Middle East, and in addition in South Africa and Northern Ireland, to remove the barriers to their success, and to empower them to make change in their communities.
PeacePlayers International is a global network of organisations that are each locally registered in their local country, including the United States, Israel, Northern Ireland, and South Africa. The non-profit organisation uses sports and the values of sportsmanship to bridge divides and to develop leaders in conflict and post-conflict communities.
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