Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
The dropout rate for Quebec youth is one out of three.
What can we do to encourage a young person to pursue his studies?
Together in pursuit of success
Before founding Pour Trois Points, there were many of us experimenting with the effects of having a supportive
infrastructure in an educational context-- and we are still benefitting today.
Now we have also been called upon to do the same thing as coaches
seeing young people grow through this, and the results that it gave in the milieux
in which we worked were impressive.
And I think that the idea was to see how we were able to transfer these same practices
and the same infrastructure to places where people are most in need.
Myself personally, as a basketball coach for 10 years,
I have had the opportunity to see young people who came from more challenging environments
who may not have necessarily had this structure from which I benefitted.
This is the spirit in which Pour 3 Points was born, a kind of know-how,
of a hope that in providing a sports program for a young person, we can help them succeed.
We can insert in a milieu
where sometimes the resources are not necessarily there to offer this help.
Currently, what we offer to young people as a resource, is first of all, help with their homework.
Every week, student-athletes are supervised by tutors
who help them with their homework and with their studies, this is one of the components.
The second component is mentoring, so each young person is matched up with a mentor
who is asked to act as a big brother, if you will.
The third aspect is conferences.
We have speakers who address interesting subjects for the youth,
and who happen to be models of success for kids.
For example: ex-university athletes.
I think that for young people, paying basketball, it is not a problem for them.
If they don't play at school, they will play in municipal clubs.
However, managing to keep the in the program, is a challenge
because we do demand at least a some effort on their part
whether it be assiduity, attending basketball practices
it took some time, but little by little we are seeing the results coming.
We had a launch event which became our fundraising event,
the P3P benefit day, in fact.
It began with a basketball tournament and finished with a wine and cheese dégustation.
So it was essentially the concept of the day.
It was fun, it was really good as an event,
in terms of people being there for the cause.
Everyone from our administrative committee is between the ages of 25 and 35 years old,
and are from different backgrounds.
Who will make the NBA?
The all raise their hands.
And I can give the anecdote wherein Maxime Paulus-Gosselin,who was the conference speaker at this time
-- he was asking them what are the chances they had to make the NBA?
And the answers were 1 in 32, 1 in 50,
whereas Maxime had made the approximate calculation, and the chances are 1 in 14 million.
My God!
On the other hand, what we present to them, are concrete examples of people
who played at the university level, which is already a success in itself
And there, slowly, the dream is not necessarily to make the NBA,
it is to play in a university.
And they say it now, where as before
they didn't even know what that was
and this, in itself, is a success because the young people have seen examples,
people who have followed this path.They have been told what it takes,
and they express it as their goal,
and this is something that is already a success, in my opinion.