PeacePlayers US Storybook 2021 - Flipbook - Page 12
2021 UNITED STATES STORYBOOK
2021 UNITED STATES STORYBOOK
WHEN FATE COMES KNOCKING
Fate has a funny way of inserting itself into your life when you
least expect it. To be fair, 15-year-old Onyeka Arah wasn’t expecting
a simple email from her basketball coach to change her life.
Which is why, on that day in 2015 when fate came calling, Onyeka
nearly ignored it.
But that trip wasn’t a one-and-done experience. As fate would have
it, that first email is still paying dividends even all these years later.
For some reason, Onyeka opened it. And that’s when fate had her.
“I’m not the most social person,” Onyeka said. “I’m also not the
loudest person in any room that I enter, but something told me you
know, take advantage of this opportunity. It might not come again.
And ever since, PeacePlayers has kept coming around. I never could
have expected that. After the trip I knew something had changed.
I knew I had gained an experience that would follow me the rest of
my life.”
“I visited the PeacePlayers website and took a look,” Arah said. “I saw
the work they do in the Middle East, the work they do in Cyprus,
Northern Ireland. So then I was intrigued. I was like, ‘Oh, okay, this
is something even bigger than basketball.’”
Oneyka was a decent high school player but a series of concussions
ended any chance she had of playing at the next level. So she headed
off to the University of Maryland and attended college for a couple
years before deciding to take a break.
Onyeka, then a high school freshman basketball player, accepted
the invitation to visit Israel as part of PeacePlayers’ Leadership
Development Program. This would be her first time traveling any
further than Minnesota, and her first time on a plane since being
a toddler. Today, this trip remains her only time out of the country.
That’s right around when fate came calling once again.
The email was an invitation to travel with an organization she had
never heard of — PeacePlayers — to a country about which she
knew very little – Israel – other than that the conflicts there seemed
dangerous and never ending.
It was on that trip that Onyeka started to learn about bridging
divides and conflict resolution. In fact, she described her trip to the
Middle East as the first step in her becoming an active, global citizen
with a global attitude, and as a moment in her life that set her up to
be a person dedicated to the betterment of society: “Experience is
the best teacher; one can never truly understand a situation until
he/she has experienced it or spoken with someone who has. Even
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more than that, I finally understood the effect and necessity of
organizations like PeacePlayers.”
Onyeka had met a PeacePlayers fellow named Latoya Fisher during
her trip to Israel, and at some point learned that Fisher went on to
become the director of PeacePlayers Baltimore. Onyeka wrote her
an email just to say hello and perhaps offer to do some volunteer
work, but she never sent it. A few months later, however, it did
prompt her to visit the PeacePlayers Baltimore website.
“So I go to the website, and I see a job posting,” Onyeka said. “First,
I see that Chinny Nwagbo is listed as interim director and I’m like,
wait a second. I know her. Chinny was teammates with my high
school basketball coach at Syracuse and she had visited one of our
basketball practices when I was a freshman. So I was like, I know
her. And then I’m looking through and I see all this cool stuff
PeacePlayers Baltimore’s doing. And I see a job opening.
“I was like, you know what, I’ll apply for this. So I sent my resume
and cover letter and she got back to me right away. And then
after that, I met her and everything and I got to join PeacePlayers
Baltimore in October, 2021. Now, Onyeka gets to use all those things
that she picked up on the trip to the Middle East – global citizenship
and using basketball to bridge divides – as a youth development
basketball coach for PeacePlayers Baltimore.
Onyeka, now 21, joined just in time to be part of PeacePlayer
Baltimore’s fall programming at Northwood Elementary School,
Sandtown-Winchester Academic Academy and Steuart Hill
Academic Academy. She and the other coaches visited the schools
four days a week, working with the students on concepts that are
central to PeacePlayers’ philosophy that sport should be used to
build relationships and be a force for peace and equity.
“We put everything in ways that the kids can understand and
relate to without watering anything down,” she said. “All of the
PeacePlayers concepts, these are things that kids can see and
recognize. They just might not have the language yet for everything.
So we kind of bring the vocabulary, introduce the concepts, and then
we do different activities to kind of get them to fully understand to
reinforce what we want them to do.”
“It’s really cool to see that it works. I’m kind of a living
example of the PeacePlayers journey, and I hope to be part
of it for a long time to come.”
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