ULYP’s New Basketball Court and Program

With donations collected through our campaign online (JUST GIVING) and offline ULYP was able to start constructing its basketball court to serve hundreds of children every year. Contributions and support from many friends of ULYP are greatly appreciated. CCC managed the construction as well as providing a donation towards making this happen. UNICEF’s CIRCLE program also partially funded this process. The next steps include covering the court and starting our basketball program this fall – part.of CIRCLE’s Team Sports Camp.

New Program: CIRCLE

A circle has no beginning and no end and neither does our new program in partnership with UNICEF. CIRCLE is a multifaceted, integrated program that targets the psycho-social wellbeing of children, youth and women through activities designed to help the participants better understand and express themselves, as well as cooperate with each other. The program targets 500 beneficiaries and takes place over a period of 7 months ending in February 2015.

 For Sports: Football Retreats

Three football retreats were held this summer.  During each retreat, the 30 players and their coaches spent three nights and four days on our campus. They attended football training sessions, as well as learning new cooperation and team work skills and building new friendships through football skills-building activities, conflict resolution and health and hygiene workshops. After a fierce competition at the end of each retreat, the winning teams met for a final cup, which was won by Al Somoud from Nahr el Bared. Congratulations to all participants, especially the winners!

For the Arts: Artist and Actors

This program enables children to develop their social skills, gain self-confidence and learn about their rights—through the arts.  Three mini camps of two nights and three days were held at the ULYP campus for  children aged 8-14 who came from as far as Bekaa, Tripoli and Tyre to immerse themselves in music, drama, art and handicrafts. The children also benefited from conflict resolution workshops and learned to work and live together on our campus.

Play4Peace

Thanks to everyone who supported our recent play4peace campaign by donating or sharing our campaign with their friends. We managed to raise almost $12,500 in donations on our JustGiving page, and thanks to offline contributions of $24,000 we met and exceeded our fundraising target. We now have enough to start building our very own basketball court! Construction in Dibbiyeh began last week and is due to finish by the end of summer. We can’t wait to start playing for peace on our brand new court!

Playing 4 Peace

If you’re a friend of ULYP on facebook or Twitter, you will have seen our posts about our new sports campaign, Play4Peace! After a series of successful meetings with Rama Chakaki, who has been advising ULYP on our social media and networking usage, we decided to launch our first online campaign to raise funds to build a basketball court at our campus in Dibbeyeh. The court will host a new program, Together in One Basket, which will give over 1000 children access to new sports, skills and friendships every year. In addition to basketball, the court will be used for other sports such as volleyball, mixed martial arts, and as a space to develop motor skills for young children. We believe that all children have the right to play sport in safe and well-equipped recreational spaces, but for the majority of underprivileged youth in Lebanon this is not the case. We have the land, coaches, and enthusiastic teams ready, we just need the court, and can go!

We have seen the unifying power of sport through our Football for Friendship program, and we are already piloting a basketball program at the American Community School (ACS) in Beirut with the help of volunteers from the school.

The campaign has involved posting regularly on facebook, Twitter, and the ULYP blog, as well as sending publicity e-mails, and running a Just Giving campaign. We have been very successful, and to date have raised over $8510of our $20,000 target (42%!), thanks to 33 generous donors.

We consider sports to be a uniting force for young people, and this is the drive behind our campaign. Every $100 contributes 1sqm to our basketball court, and takes us one step closer to achieving our goal of a united Lebanon. So please join us, donate whatever you can, and share our message with your family and friends. Thank you

#playforpeace

http://www.justgiving.com/Volunteers-ULYP