EVAM Basketball Service’ event: The 1000 point game

Last Saturday, a group of students organised and ran the “1000 point basketball game” to continue to raise funds towards building a basketball court at the local EVAM refugee centre in Crissier. Over 60 students, parents, friends and teachers attended throughout the day, including a big group of residents from the EVAM refugee centre itself.

After 7 hours and 14 minutes of non-stop, continuous basketball the group finally hit the 1000 points scored! The game continued to see who would get to 535 first… each point scored representing one of the unaccompanied refugee children currently in the EVAM centres across Vaud. Well done to Santi in Y12 who hit the winning shot to give the victory to blue with a final score of 536-530!!

The International School of Lausanne EVAM Basketball Service group have been working tirelessly over the past two years to try to bring basketball to the residents of the EVAM refugee centre in Crissier by raising a huge 10’000 CHF that will build a basketball court there. EVAM aids and houses people who are seeking refuge in Vaud and helps approximately 5'500 people throughout the canton. The centre in Crissier currently has 290 refugees, 30 of them children, around half of them alone and unaccompanied.

Before the pandemic, the International School of Lausanne used to host “EVAM Sports Sundays” when refugees from EVAM would come to ISL and play sports with our students. These were amazing events with real integration through sport. Basketball is a huge passion for many of the refugees in Crissier, however, they currently have only one old, rundown, broken, hoop to play on. When the pandemic meant all our ISL basketball practices were cancelled, the Girls basketball team decided to use their practice time to fundraise to have a court built at the EVAM centre in Crissier. The long term goal is that ISL students would go there each week to play in mixed games with the refugees at the centre, and they would come to ISL and play on our court.

Thanks to this brilliant event on Saturday, the team are not ever so close to their 10’000-00 CHF total! You can continue to support their efforts by dropping your donations into reception at ISL or through their GoFundMe page here!