PeacePlayers South Africa Storybook FINAL - Flipbook - Page 18
I. THE HEARTBEAT - UMLAZI
Sean Tuohey is not your typical Founder. He is willing to travel anywhere
and go to the furthest extent to see his dreams become a reality. His
persistence in bringing his ideas to life led him to create what we now
know as PeacePlayers. But let's take a step back to the year 2000 and
forget the name "PeacePlayers" until the mid-point of this collection of
stories. For the first set of stories, we'll stick with the name "Playing for
Peace", the organisation's original name.
In 2001, "Playing for Peace" was born in South Africa. After university,
Sean found himself in Northern Ireland, then Durban on vacation.
He found out about Durban after living in Northern Ireland (NI and
attempting to start a basketball program there. In NI, "the sport didn't gain
traction early on," says Sean. However, a police chief Sean met while in
NI understood his affinity for connecting kids through a game that gave
him so much life growing up. He suggested that Sean's idea could work in
South Africa, a country less than a decade away from its darkest years of
apartheid. This police chief connected Sean with a police chief in a coastal
city named Durban.
After a call with Durban's police chief, Sean was directed to someone at
Albert Park's YMCA who shared Sean's vision of introducing basketball
as a bridge to connect kids in conflict areas. With the shared excitement
for basketball and the idea that he could surf any time of the year, Sean
hopped on a plane to explore the unknown in Durban. Upon landing,
he moved into Pasadena Court in the Central Durban Area. As a white
foreigner in his mid-twenties, walking the streets of Central Durban, Sean
says the "street kids would chase me away sometimes.” Despite getting
chased away occasionally, Sean stayed on course.
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PEACEPLAYERS SOUTH AFRICA STORYBOOK
