Playing for Peace: The Power of Basketball to Promote Peace

ESPN's Chad Ford--who is also a professor of international cultural studies at BYU-Hawaii, with a J.D. from the Georgetown University Law Center and an M.A. in conflict resolution from George Mason University--has two excellent articles on Playing for Peace, a non-profit organization founded in 2001 that uses the game of basketball to unite and educate children and their communities. The core idea of Playing for Peace is that when kids play basketball, they learn to work together on the court, and that makes them more likely to work together off the court. As a result, children from different and opposing demographic groups learn to view "the other side" with less fear and more objectivity. As they mature, they will hopefully continue to feel that way, thus making peace between the groups more likely. The program has been implemented with success in South Africa and Northern Ireland, and was instituted in Israel and the West Bank in December 2005.

Chad traveled to Israel back in May to see how well Playing for Peace had improved relations between Israeli and Palestinian children. Check out this ESPN article and an excerpt from Chad's Willamette Law Review article for more--they are must reads. The law review article is from the same Willamette Law School symposium on the Future of Sports Law that Chad, Rick Karcher, and I were a part of back in March.

Also, Playing for Peace will be featured tomorrow (Sunday, July 30) on SportsCenter and Outside the Lines. Check out both on ESPN. Particularly considering the current turmoil in the Middle East, any ideas for peace should be given serious consideration.

Posted in: