The Philippi Angels Township Baseball Academy is an organisation committed to Developing Community and Education through Baseball.
Established in 2006, the Angels are the first team from the black townships to compete in the Baseball Association of Western Province, the largest youth and adult baseball league in South Africa.
We provide meaningful after-school and weekend activity and educational development for more than 80 youth, boys and girls, from 6 to 18 years of age. Baseball has become a significant part of each child's life in this community and has provided them with self-confidence, a positive set of values, and the experience of building with a team.
Our organisational Objectives are as follows :
- To provide constructive youth activity
- To combat the abuse of drugs and alcohol among our youth
- To improve educational outcomes and economic opportunities
- To reach out to communities of other racial and economic backgrounds
- To develop competitive baseball in Philippi
- To develop a national tournament-worthy baseball field complex
- To increase community pride
- To increase local economic activity
- To host national and international tournaments
- To become a destination for international baseball exchange
- To establish the country's first club-based junior baseball league
- To create and empower future mentors and community leaders
- To share our stories with as broad an audience as possible
THE VISION:
Philippi is presently a township rife with crime, unemployment, and urban squalor. We seek to transform Philippi into a destination, a model for other communities by introducing and developing a new youth sport.
Baseball is played in more than 100 countries of the world. Professional teams gross more income than any other sport. More and more it is becoming an international game, even at the highest professional levels. South Africa has a presence in the international baseball scene, but Black South Africans do not. Attempts to develop baseball in Black South African communities have yet to yield competitive players on a national level.
We seek to change this paradigm by developing a thriving community youth baseball program. We will raise funds nationally and internationally through non-profit partnerships. We will strive to build the local township economy through every phase of our construction and ongoing activity. We will employ local builders, artisans, landscapers, gardeners, food prep workers, and general laborers. We will provide a meaningful, competitive, sports-based holistic development program for over 400 local youths. We will seek to develop provincial, national, and, hopefully, international players through our high performance program. We will bring communities of all economic and racial backgrounds into Philippi to play baseball and experience our pride and hospitality. We will empower adults with employable coaching and mentoring skills.
In our first year of activity, we experienced success on the playing field and in garnering local and international support. We attribute this success to our belief in our shared humanity, our Ubuntu. We recognize that by sharing our story of hope and achievement with a broad, diverse audience that we are not only receiving support but delivering inspiration. We help each other because we believe we have something special to give and through that giving we become that which we believe in.
|
