Sisters against racism – One Team VI, Week V

07/02/2018

The fifth day of training of the sixth project of One Team with Valencia Basket served to know the history of Evi and Blessing, two young girls from Nigeria in the neighborhood of the Fonteta de San Luís and the Santa Marta Project has helped them overcome problems of integration and racism.

 

It is never easy to start a new life, Evi and Blessing know it, his mother emigrated years ago from Nigeria when Blessing was only two years old. Soon after arriving, Evi would be born. Blessing has spoken with his mother, "leaving your family behind, leaving the place where you came from, starting a new life, means a lot".

 

And come to a new place, and face different, roots not so settled, face racism, "Yes, I have felt discrimination because of being black," says Evi. Her sister delves, "of course I've noticed racism, I'm walking down the street and they look at me strange, or insults at school... in Santa Marta they taught me not to pay attention, to say it, just like at home and at school".

 

They are not the only problems faced by someone who arrives with few resources to a new city, "they gave me a scholarship to play basketball, but I was far away and my mother could not take me, so I decided to stop going". Now, with One Team, he gets a new opportunity that brings him closer to basketball, "now is a new opportunity, this is closer and I can come when I can".

 

Blessing highlights One Team more values, "besides basketball, they teach us to share, to be together, to respect each other, to value each other, to work as a team and those things".


Ten sessions, a goal

Supported by the work of the Obra Social "La Caixa", this project "One Team VI" has planned ten training sessions that will take place on Tuesdays from January 9 in the afternoon until mid-March. With them, participants are expected to live positive experiences and develop healthy habits of personal improvement that can be transferred to the school or work environment. All this through the learning of the basic concepts of a collective sport such as basketball, which will help participants to know the values ​​of sacrifice and responsibility that derive from organized exercise, use sport as a formula for personal development and direct their steps so that they can find in the practice of any sport activity a way to grow as people.


Santa Marta Project

Santa Marta is a Project of Socio-educational Intervention with minors at risk of social exclusion and their families, in the neighborhood of the Fuente de San Lluis in Valencia, which is developed within the network framework of the Family and Childhood Program of Caritas Diocesana From Valencia. This project is an attempt to facilitate the integration of minors and their families who, from a disadvantaged social environment, live different situations of exclusion, which are causing a process of social maladjustment. And it is taking steps towards a project to promote the neighborhood itself and a space of attention and company to facilitate the social promotion of the participants in this initiative.


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