The power of sport to jumpstart community engagement: Les Ballons Intensifs

Montréal, Québec – With quality training and equipment, a teen on a basketball court can master a crossover dribble or hone their reverse layup. With the same attention to training and quality, says Ernest Jr. Edmond, that teen can also learn how to become a community advocate.

At Les Ballons Intensifs, Ernest and his team combine sports training with civic engagement, empowering youth from low-income and under-served neighbourhoods to become agents of change.

Born in Haiti and raised in Montreal East, Ernest is a firsthand witness to how social inequities disenfranchise residents from community engagement. Without access to meaningful opportunities to get involved, and with no clear path to escape their social conditions, kids from his community were adopting antisocial behaviours. To many, sports seemed like the only real way out — but only a tiny percentage of kids were destined to become elite athletes.

The teambuilding skills LBI youth learn on the court are channeled into community-building skills off it. LBI participants learn how to advocate for themselves, their families, and their communities: for example, generating petitions to install water fountains at local parks, volunteering at community organizations, participating on boards and school councils, even starting their own businesses and not-for-profits.

“These kids are used to seeing themselves as the problem: as the racialized kids playing basketball in the park at night and getting up to no good, as the recipients of other people’s decisions and charity,” says Ernest. “We’re changing that narrative. LBI youth are learning to see themselves as leaders. These kids are in the park, in public spaces, in bright daylight. They’re engaged, they’re meeting people in their neighbourhoods, they’re working hard, they’re smiling, they’re making a real difference — and they like it. We are redefining what it means to be engaged.”