Basketball, a playground in the name of Ciccio Pin in a Catholic mission in Kenya

The Vecio Basket is raising funds to reach the 25 thousand euros needed to build it. Battaglia: “Let’s help together with Don Basso.” Zanatta: “Passion to share”

TREVISO. This is a beautiful, uplifting, refreshing story that makes you feel good. Sport and social work hand in hand. Objective: to build a playground, that is an outdoor pitch. Where is it? Inside the Saint Mark Catholic Parish of Ol Moran mission, Kenya, Africa, altitude 2000 m. on the highlands between Mount Kenya and the Rift Valley, 300 km from Nairobi. Who? The Vecio Basket, which will name the field after the unforgettable Ciccio Pin, born Giancarlo Pin Dal Pos. Cost 25 thousand euros. A fundraiser is needed, already started among the club members and now extended to those who want to contribute, both individuals and sponsors (registered to the Mwanga Onlus Association, iban IT33 D 08327 62421 00000 0503 295 causal Campo da Basket Ciccio Pin, Kenya).

A great way to remember a great character of Treviso basketball who left us last year and to equip the Tumaini Academy parish school, nursery and primary (but from January 2023 it will also become Junior Secondary, i.e. middle school) with an aggregation structure social. The idea, like the project, belongs to the architect Stefano Battaglia, director of works and design, also from Vecio Basket, which deals with Environmental Heritage in Venice and who very often commutes to Kenya. In the mission there are already the church and the school and other structures: in essence, the project supports the commitment to use sport to complete school education and to promote the integration of pupils from the various ethnic groups in the area: by now they are 450 and there they eat and sleep, therefore with boarding and daily service. The Catholic mission Ol Moran, created 25 years ago, is of the Patriarchate of Venice, under the aegis of Monsignor Francesco Moraglia, offers daily service and boarding in a rural area that remains very poor, marked by tribal insecurity and animosity, also consequences of poor level of education. The Ciccio Pin pitch is therefore part of the desire to develop some supplementary activities, both for the school path and for the enhancement of local basketball talents: athletic and team sports, the educational farm and activities with an ethnic and cultural imprint.

“I’m simply giving a hand to that African mission – explains Stefano Battaglia – together with Don Giacomo Basso, my dear friend for 15 years: I take care of the buildings, that is the church, the school specializing in agriculture and sport, the protection center for minors “. Adds Carlo Zanatta, column of Vecio Basket: “We asked ourselves what we could have done for social issues, create something to facilitate the aggregation of those African children by clearly combining the sport we like best, basketball: ultimately we want them to try our passion “. As for fundraising, “we follow the entire path of funding – Battaglia points out – all the money is controlled down to the last cent and arrives directly at its destination without being subjected to too much bureaucracy”. Soon also in Africa they will know who Vecio Basket is; and from up there Ciccio Pin will certainly be happy.