Basketball NI held their very first Youth Forum this past weekend on Saturday 4th March at the National Football Stadium at Windsor Park.
You may be asking why we went to a football stadium for our a basketball youth forum? Our aim was to highlight and immerse ourselves in an elite sports venue with our young players in Northern Ireland. We wanted show everyone what the BNI community are striving towards. We would like to thank previous BNI Board Member Heather Wright and IFA Conference Manager Peter Sheppard for their help and support with the venue.
Our Club Engagement Officer (Lauren) and Secretary (Sarah) welcomed our Youth Forum members to day and give them some information on the structure and community of BNI currently.
We then handed over to Michael McCabe from Sport Changes Live. Michael got the everyone involved in ice breakers and team building exercises. We would like to thank Michael for supporting us with the forum and bringing his wealth of the sport to the experience. We hope this is the start of a working relationship between SCL and BNI. We are meeting with other groups to become involved in our Youth Forum and if any groups feel they would like to get involved please contact lauren@basketballni.com
The next part of our day saw our young people take a closer look at what they think are the strengths, weakness, opportunities and threats to Basketball NI at this current time. We allowed some time for the group to discuss what they thought then they presented their ideas back to the group. Lauren and Sarah were extremely impressed at the knowledge our younger members had of the landscape of basketball within Northern Ireland. The feedback from our members will be used to shape our strategy for the next 5 years and we are excited to work alongside our Youth Forum to act on the opportunities they have outlined.
After a quick break we handed back to Michael to get everyone up and moving about with another team building exercise. We then brought everyone back together to discuss how our Youth Forum members can assist us with our social media presence.
Basketball NI are looking forward to working with our 9 Youth Forum members over the next few months as our Basketball NI community grows.
Keep an eye on our socials over the next week as we introduce you to all our Youth Forum members!