Zenit launches new One Team project with local children

Zenit St Petersburg is starting a fresh One Team journey with three new partners: the Correctional School No. 5; the Center for the Blind, and the Deaf Center.

The school will be the club’s main partner, and specializes in working with children with impairments in oral and written speech. The program is aimed at uniting the children, fostering cohesion and showing how everyone is important. There will be weekly on-court sessions for between 12 and 20 participants, aged 14-17.

Each session will include surprises, starting with a special video welcome from Zenit stars and One Team Ambassadors Dmitry Kulagin and Jordan Loyd. The second session featured a visit from basketball freestyler Ilya, and the project’s psychologist Konstantin believes great progress is already being made in engaging with the participants.

"From my observations during the first session, I can say that the guys were very interested," he said. "The situation of being together with professional coaches and teachers helped them to unite and raised their self-esteem, both individually and as members of the same class. They are more confident, and that’s great. We will now observe the process of mastering the skills that the children will acquire in the process of completing assignments, and I’m sure it will definitely benefit them."

One Team volunteer Lyudmila is also convinced the program will greatly help the participants, saying: "Recently, a lot of opinions have been shared about the modern ‘lost generation’. Everyone has the opportunity to correct the situation, like the caring people involved in the One Team project: volunteers, coaches, athletes, teachers and masters of words. Within the framework of the sessions, the guys use team tasks to develop character, overcome their fears, and show the best human qualities."

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.