Granger and Fontecchio spreading joy with One Team

Bitci Baskonia Vitoria-Gasteiz stars Jayson Granger and Simone Fontecchio have been spreading some joy by spending time with the Spanish club’s One Team participants.

The players, who are Baskonia’s Ambassadors for the social responsibility program, surprised the girls and boys on the program by making a guest appearance at last week’s session at the Aldabe Civic Center.

Baskonia’s One Team program is running throughout the season, working with the Gizarterako Association – the club’s social integration partner since 2013 – to deliver weekly sessions between October and May for a group of 16 children aged between 5 and 12 years old. The main topics they have worked on are respect, teamwork, efforts and motivation – using examples from basketball to learn these important day to day life skills.

The children greatly enjoyed spending time with Granger and Fontecchio, who said: "I had never been a One Team Ambassador before but I knew about the project and that it’s very important for the boys and girls. It was a pleasure to spend time with them and show them the values of basketball on and off the court."

Granger added: "The experience is really nice, being able to see these children smiling and learning with basketball. It is very fulfilling."

One Team, supported by Turkish Airlines as the One Team Founding Patron and with the collaboration of Special Olympics as Proud Partner, uses basketball to achieve real social impact in our communities.

With an innovative model of interconnectedness across an entire continent, Euroleague Basketball and its clubs have developed a complete CSR program that brings together activities from each team in an integrated, impactful way, working under the theme of ‘community integration’ that actively addresses targets of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 10 on Reduced Inequalities.

Each participating club develops a specific One Team project tailored to its own community needs to benefit groups in danger of exclusion due to problems such as substance abuse and gender, physical or intellectual disability. Since its founding in 2012, the One Team program has reached already directly and indirectly more than 23,000 participants through its various team projects.