Basketball players Yoro Barry and Ndeye Woly Ndaw, both from the Dakar University Club (DUC) and Oumar Ndiaye, Inspector of Supervised Education and Social Protection under the jurisdiction of the Court of Appeal of Dakar
Ahead of World Basketball Day, the second edition of which will take place on December 21, 2024, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), the International Olympic Committee (IOC), the Directorate General for Judicial and Social Protection (DGPJS) of Senegal’s Ministry of Justice, the Senegalese National Olympic and Sports Committee (CNOSS), the Dakar University Basketball Club (DUC), the Jappo Olympique de Guédiawaye, and the artist VJ organized an event aimed at using sports as a tool for awareness, resilience, and empowerment of at-risk youth. The event was held at the Pikine Safeguarding Center, located in the suburbs of Dakar, on December 18, 2024. This initiative was part of the "SC:ORE - Sports Against Crime: Outreach, Resilience, Empowerment" project.
The event began with a welcoming speech by Ms. Annalisa Pauciullo, Regional Coordinator and Head of the Trafficking in Persons and Smuggling of Migrants Unit of the UNODC Regional Office for West and Central Africa. Speaking on behalf of UNODC’s Regional Representative, Amado Philip de Andrés, she stated: “UNODC firmly believes that sports is a powerful tool to raise awareness, build resilience, and offer positive alternatives to risky behaviors and crime.”
Following this, Ms. Aissé Gassama Tall, Director General of Judicial and Social Protection at the Ministry of Justice, emphasized the importance of collaboration to combat youth crime through sports: “Together, we can create an environment where every young person, regardless of their background, has the chance to thrive through sports.”
“You may not know this, but I used to be a footballer before becoming a singer. I believed in it; I thought I would become a great footballer, but then COVID happened. After that, I turned to music,” said VJ, a successful Senegalese singer with over 600,000 TikTok followers, during a mentoring session with youth from the Pikine Safeguarding Center. The goal: to inspire them to believe in themselves and stay away from violence, crime, and drugs.
Before VJ, basketball players Yoro Barry and Ndeye Woly Ndaw, both from the DUC club, shared their experiences with more than 1,500 young residents from the center and nearby centers invited for the occasion.
Yoro Barry, with great emotion, shared how he “lived on the streets, stole, and used drugs before discovering basketball while watching youths play at university,” which ultimately saved him.
Ndeye Woly Ndaw encouraged the youth, particularly girls like herself, to “try basketball and engage in sports instead of staying idle at home.”
Yoro and Ndeye then coached two friendly basketball matches, with Yoro mentoring the male teams and Ndeye mentoring the female teams. They were later joined by VJ, who made a few shots before announcing that the winning teams would receive tickets to his concert on December 29 at Dakar’s Grand Theatre.
The young participants from the Pikine Safeguarding Center also got a preview of the concert through a live performance by VJ.
The “(SC:ORE) - Sports Against Crime: Outreach, Resilience, Empowerment” of At-Risk Youth initiative, developed by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and the International Olympic Committee (IOC), aims to effectively use sports to prevent youth from violence and crime while promoting its role in building peaceful and safe communities. The initiative seeks to develop policies that integrate sports into violence prevention frameworks, create tailored tools, share best practices, and provide training for policymakers and field professionals.
In Senegal, the SC:ORE program, launched in 2023 in partnership with the ministries of sports, youth, education, and justice, aims to engage at-risk youth through sports to support their emotional, social, and educational development and prevent their involvement in crime, drugs, and exploitation by criminal networks. With the 4th Youth Olympic Games scheduled to take place in Dakar in 2026, there is an opportunity to strengthen the engagement of disadvantaged youth through sports, fostering social inclusion and addressing marginalization in line with the objectives of the 2030 Agenda and the Kyoto Declaration.
