BB4P PROPOSAL FOR SUSTAINABILITY AND DEVELOPMENT

BB4P’s purpose was, and still is, to use the Game of Basketball to attract “at-risk” Youth away from violent conflicts.

BB4P’s concept design is to:

Designate specific Basketball facilities within volatile areas as Peace Zones whereby no type of violent behaviour will be tolerated and where Youth from all ‘backgrounds, ethnicities, religions’ assemble daily for practices and other community development activities for Peaceful co-existence.
Encourage Saturday competition on each Peace Zone or between Peace Zones and expand the Peace Zone to a larger community Peace Zone (Centre) that will include many other Sports and Community events..
Establish Peace Clubs in a minimum of three (3) Secondary Schools surrounding each Peace Zone to sensitize their fellow-students about PEACE and to engage in Community Out-Reach Projects for PEACE.
Support and award verifiable success stories of BB4P participants on a competitive basis.
Encourage “BUY-INS” from every source interested in being part of the Nigerian Peace Zone Network.

BB4P has transformed many violent prone individuals into Peace Makers (Facilitators).

The First National BB4P Peace Zone and Peace Club Championship (October – December, 2006) employed 1770 Youth from 36 Peace Zones plus officials for their active participation in the three (3) months championship (see our BB4P Brochure ‘The Journey thus far’).

If BB4P could host this National BB4P Championship twice a year more youth would be employed, many more would be encouraged to go to school while others would use their skills to join professional basketball teams and other Peace facilitating organizations.

Peace Zones are being encouraged to register as NGOs thus making them sites for growth to provide more opportunities for our Youth in their various communities. BB4P believes that USAID/IFESH/CALM should award ten (10) to twenty (20) scholarships of N5,000 – N15,000 to promising youths attached to each Peace Zone. The future success stories of these award winning youth will provide adequate skills training that will outshine any amount of concept papers on youth skill acquisition training that IFESH could ever request, plus the cost of implementation will be financially far less.

The success of BB4P so far leads us to believe that sustainability is inevitable as more individual, agencies such as government and private businesses ‘buy-in’, thus providing additional employment for “at-risk” youth, reducing violent conflicts, increasing community development as the network of BB4P Peace Zones and Peace Clubs grow.

Coach O. B. Johnson
BB4P Program Manager