One-Page MEDIA BRIEFING
Midnight Basketball Australia
WHAT IS MIDNIGHT BASKETBALL AND HOW DOES IT WORK?
Midnight Basketball is a national social inclusion program to help 'at risk' youth build skills and
confidence, and identify and embrace positive opportunities in their lives and their community.
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Midnight Basketball Australia supports communities nationally who run the local tournaments for 12-18 year old male
and female ‘at-risk’ youth. It provides a positive, highly structured and life-changing activity filling a gap during the high
risk periods of Friday or Saturday nights and is free for participants to attend.
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Starting at 7:30pm each 8 week tournament night includes a hot, nutritious dinner, followed by a compulsory life skills
workshop, then a minimum of three games of competition basketball. A bus takes all players home to their front door by
Midnight. Run in local basketball stadiums, the nights provide a high energy, safe and motivating environment.

In keeping with the motto “No Workshop, No Jumpshot”, players must attend the compulsory workshops in order to play
basketball. These workshops enable relevant teen issues to be discussed from health and wellbeing, drugs and alcohol
to important life skills like courtesy, respect, conflict resolution and financial literacy to a range of vital job readiness skills.
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Midnight Basketball builds strong relationships, such as those with community leaders and other community mentors, on
the premise that they can demonstrate leadership and become strong role models to players.

Basketballs, team singlets and bags, banners, volunteer lanyards, player awards, trophies and an online administration
and tournament system are provided by Midnight Basketball Australia, along with training and funding support for
communities to continue running the 8 week tournaments twice a year.
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Since its Redfern inception, we have run over 198 tournaments in metropolitan, regional and remote locations with over
88,000 youth attendances (65% Indigenous), with a greater than 99.7% attendance rate in all nightly program elements.
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Over 41,000 individuals have volunteered nationally contributing an incredible 268,000 volunteer hours.
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We have served over 118,000 hot, nutritious dinners and run 4,750 life skill workshops.
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As part of the program, every Midnight Basketball participant completes a survey on Grand Final nights. These results,
independently assessed by CIRCA (Cultural & Indigenous Research Centre Australia), show:
95 per cent of players say that Midnight Basketball is "great and want to attend again”.
"Communities want (expect) the program to continue".
WHY IS IT SO SUCCESSFUL?
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From Liverpool to Wodonga to Toowoomba and Geraldton in Western Australia, more and more locations are
approaching Midnight Basketball to help bring it to their community. The results speak for themselves. Large numbers of
players keep re-enrolling not only to play basketball but to voluntarily participate in the compulsory life skills workshops.

While basketball acts as a magnet to attract the participants, the structured night including a workshop is key to providing
opportunities and new life skills. Special guests and mentors from all walks of life, players and coaches from NBL teams
like the Sydney Kings and Perth Wildcats, attend and provide a range of lessons and learnings for the Midnight
Basketballers. On the first night of each tournament, the players develop their Code of Conduct.

Midnight Basketball has unique inclusionary qualities at two levels. Firstly, the game of basketball is crucial to its success
because as a team sport it includes the opportunity to build leadership and teamwork skills, behavioural improvement,
fitness and focus. Secondly, engagement occurs around the sidelines through the volunteers and members of the
community who turn up and get to know the youth participants and vice versa.

Midnight Basketball is designed to be an easily replicable model across all communities and from one tournament to the
next within each community.
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Volunteers provide the backbone of the program nationally and come from across the whole community including local,
state and federal government, community, sporting and business groups, employment services, education, policing and
justice, youth and family services and a diverse range of community individuals; all bringing different experience, wisdom
and opportunities to the youth.
www.midnightbasketball.org.au
Twitter: @Midnight_BBall