Mike Evans ~ Belfast Blazers
Episode description
When Mike Evans graduated from college, he moved to Belfast, Northern Ireland – ostensibly to be a Program Director for a non-profit, coaching basketball to young school kids in a visionary program called Playing for Peace, while keeping his hand in semi-pro basketball on the side. But things didn’t turn out quite as he expected, and Mike soon found himself playing out a vision of his own – coaching basketball to a mixed group of reluctant Protestant and Catholic 15-year-old boys – each side charged with preconceived notions and generations of prejudices.
In his memoir, The Belfast Blazers, Mike writes about the challenges he faced, about how a chance meeting of the Dalai Lama on a basketball court opened his mind to a vision of collaboration, and documents his audacious belief in the power of basketball to be a vehicle for change.
In ink & peat episode 44, Mike Evans shares his story and describes how his Belfast Blazers became the trial run of what would become Full Court Peace - a winning organization dedicated to bringing peace and understanding across cultural divides.