PORT MORESBY (Papua New Guinea) - Basketball Federation of Papua New Guinea's (BFPNG) highly popular Twilight Basketball is back, and they kicked off a session at Gerehu.

BFPNG organized the program on the 14th of June to celebrate the Queen's birthday.

"We wanted to celebrate the holiday with a program and decided to bring back Twilight Basketball so we can invite everyone to participate and play in the games," shared BFPNG Executive Officer, Nick Daroa.

Twilight Basketball is a Basketball For Good program that provides an opportunity to bring everyone together where all ages and genders are welcomed to play basketball. It is also one of the FIBA Foundation's Community Impact projects that addresses social issues facing the community through basketball.

Daroa also shared that they took the opportunity to educate the participants to protect themselves during the COVID-19 pandemic.

"We wanted to create a safe space for the kids and the community to play some games and it has been a while since the lockdown since basketball was played," he said.

"We also made sure to talk about prevention of diseases with key messaging of washing of hands constantly and a proper eating lifestyle to improve our health," he added.

Twilight organized drills, 3x3, and basketball games for all who attend, with teams created on the day, enabling the participants to play other people.

"Twilight is a very important program for BFPNG because it promotes social inclusion and we play to focus on introducing the fast-paced program of 3x3," shared BFPNG Hoops For Health Coordinator, Jordan Sere.

"We also include mixed teams of boys and girls in our games to promote equality and teach the value of confidence to young girls," he added.

The program welcomed 93 kids with 49 boys and 44 girls participating, which made the federation elated with the number of females participating.

"We were happy with the turnout especially with the number of girls going out of their way to participate in the program. It gives us more inspiration to work harder because we know that basketball is getting more popular every day," Daroa proudly shared.

About Community Impact projects:

The FIBA Foundation’s Community Impact programs are implemented into individual countries and address social issues relevant to the communities such as health, education and gender inequality. These grassroots programs are implemented in collaboration with National Federations to grow the basketball family while improving society. Please contact us if you want to know more about our programs or if you are interested to work with us.

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