Turkey to host young ballers at Pass It On camp

ISTANBUL

Turkey will host some 200 young basketball players and 100 coaches from 75 countries at the Pass It On basketball camp at the Darüşşafaka Society.

Some 200 young basketball players and 100 coaches from 75 countries will gather in Istanbul this week for the Pass It On basketball camp.

The seven-day camp at the Darüşşafaka Society is a project launched as part of the Turkish Basketball Federation’s (TBF) new social responsibility campaign.

The project, which aims to promote basketball learning and cultural understanding, is also part of the TBF’s promotional campaign for the 2014 FIBA World Championship for Women, which will be held in Istanbul and Ankara from Sept. 27 to Oct. 5.

“At the TBF, basketball is about far more than what happens on the court,” TBF President Turgay Demirel said. “This camp provides an amazing opportunity for young people to see the international reach of basketball and learn about the value of our sport.”

In addition to international participants, 55 young basketball players from Turkey will attend the camp as part of the ongoing celebrations of the TBF’s 55th anniversary.

International participants include representatives from Uruguay, the United States, France, South Korea
and New Zealand.

“Through basketball [children] learn values like reliability, responsibility, commitment, and teamwork,” said Namibian coach Ramah Mumba. “The Pass It On Camp in Turkey is a great opportunity to be exposed to other cultures, to broaden one’s horizon and to be treated as equals in the world.”
The Pass It On camp builds on the legacy of the TBF’s 2010 Children of the World Championship, which brought together children to Turkey from 110 countries around the globe in conjunction with the 2010 FIBA World Championship.

“Our biggest goal at this camp is for kids who come from different cultures and different places to be able to come together with the same objective regardless different in religion, language, and color and to show all the world what they can do,” said Samer Şenbayrak, TBF’s youth development director and Pass It On director.