ASOP supports SI basketball program

The Solomon Islands Basketball Federation (SIBF) has become the next successful recipient in the region to be awarded the Australian Sports Outreach Program (ASOP) sport development grant worth around thirty-seven thousand Solomon dollars (SBD).

The Australian Sports Commission (ASC) and the Commonwealth of Australia through the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFAT) in Honiara provided the grant to help support the federation’s youth basketball project entitled “Healthy Living, Creativity and Basketball”.

According to SIBF General Secretary, Mr. Uriel Matanani, the grant support received last week came as a surprise but was nevertheless well received by the basketball federation.

 

“We had actually put our initial proposal through last year when the invitation by ASOP to all regional sporting bodies was announced”, Matanani explained.

 

“We even managed to draft, pass and endorse a Child Protection Policy for Solomon Islands basketball in order to not only meet certain requirements of the proposal, but become one of the first federations in the country to have such a policy safe guarding children’s rights who are actively involved in basketball”, he added.

Matanani explained that after handing their final and revised proposal in May, they did not receive any response until last month. He said that the federation will now have to re-establish all their contacts with partner organizations and supporters, in order to run the program.

The project “Health Living, Creativity and Basketball” aims to drive the message of living a positive and healthy lifestyle through active participation in sports (basketball). The main aim of the project is to instil the right attitudes and teach young people to become responsible young adults.

The project will involve two, ten day basketball clinics designed for young children between the ages of 12 – 17 with the aim of introducing fundamental basketball skills alongside the key messages of the project. These clinics would take place during the school Holidays.

Talks on health and social issues will be delivered during the course of each clinic by representatives from the Ministry of Health and other partner groups. The program will also feature and encourage creativity through a short performance and dance workshop.

According to the federation, the clinics will be facilitated by the Solomon Islands National Basketball Mens and Womens team, in order to also help build their coaching capacity.

“We will most likely have to re-schedule our program for this project to early next year”, Matanani said.

‘We now have to inform schools and including our partner groups before we can engage in the program but at this point in time we want to avoid the current election period, and let the children take their schools holidays this time around before we start afresh in 2015”, he added.

“We would like to thank the Australian Government and ASC for this wonderful opportunity towards assisting the basketball federation in meeting some of its major development goals for basketball in our country, and we hope to successfully meet our objectives under this program”.

The basketball federation aims to target more than 200 young participants in this project.




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