Participants in their Sasol gear at the City Wide Tournament
PPI-SA was able to host many events this year, and we would like to take an opportunity to highlight the best of the year 2012. PPI-SA can sometimes face unconventional and unique circumstances that can make even a simple basketball game a challenge. The staff at PPI-SA work extremely hard and often have to overcome many obstacles in order to make our program successful. This is a tribute to the staff and participants of PPI-SA who came together to overcome adversity to make sure our program continued to thrive.
City-Wide Tournament 2012
This was our biggest and most exciting event of the year. Girls and boys teams from our primary school program came together at Hoy Park in Durban for the 22nd semi-annual CWT. We hosted over 800 participants at the venue! Sasol was a huge sponsor for us and donated hats, t shirts, and water bottles to every participant. The Brooklyn Nets, a United States professional basketball team in the National Basketball Association, was recognized at the tournament for their investment in PeacePlayers. Highlights included over 30 LDP participants who were selected as our best leaders from the LDP program to help run and coach the tournament, VCT (voluntary counseling and testing for HIV) provided by Zoe life, Adidas kit given to most outstanding participants, and the PPI-SA song “I’m a PeacePlayer” wrap performed by Thobani Khumalo. Thobani’s original song resonated with so many of our participant’s; you couldn’t go to a school without hearing the song being sung by someone!
LDP Olympics
LDP Olympics in Umbumbulu!
The LDP Olympics was a creative idea to change up our LDP events. We put participants through a variety of individual skills tests and added up total scores to find a winner. There were 10 events total, and we ran LDP Olympics in each of our areas. PPI-SA was able to give out some nice prizes and we made a lot of our participants smile. It was some of the most fun we had all year. The participants in Umbumbulu went through these events with so much passion and energy; it was a really special day for all of them. Thanks to Kyler McClary for his creativity in planning these events.
LDP Extravaganza
This year we made an effort to innovate and refine our LDP events. Our LDP extravaganza in Umlazi was a great example of this. Girls and boys teams came together from 4 areas to play shorter, more intense games. We had the tournament be a more round robin style, so each team was exposed to all the other areas, rather than just one other team. This maximized our goal of bridging divides among these communities with players getting the opportunity to play teams from every area multiple times. We also held a skills session where we mixed the teams together to work on basketball fundamentals. We ended the day with new and unique life skills activities from Bridges of Hope, where participants were asked to really think truly about what they want in the future, and how important it is to have a vision in life.
Bridges of Hope Training
We were very lucky to have the opportunity to be trained in an award winning and innovative Curriculum called Bridges of Hope. Christy Joy Webster, master trainer and facilitator, trained the entire PPI-SA staff and coaches in this curriculum that focuses less on the basic information of HIV/AIDS and more on how important it is to value yourself. If you value yourself and realize how important your future is, you will be more likely to make healthy decisions. PPI-SA has been looking to refine our life skills curriculum in past years, and these activities can be truly life changing. We are so grateful to Christy joy Webster for being a passionate, caring, and amazing facilitator!
PPI-SA staff after completing the Bridges of Hope Training
A genuine thank you goes out to all PPI-SA staff and participants that made these events possible. We hope for even more fun and exciting events in 2013!
