Cristian poses in Aguadulce, one of the Andalusian municipalities where he wants to start his school
A young Colombian living in the capital of Malaga promotes a mobile basketball school, a project that has managed to be a finalist in an Endesa and ACB social program
Cristian David Abad Rivillas has always dreamed of being able to make a living from basketball. Since he was little he has been glued to a ball and in his native country, Colombia, he came to play in semi-professional categories. A couple of years ago he traveled to Spain to settle in Malaga, looking for academic and job opportunities and also to continue to be linked to basketball. He is now a referee for the Andalusian Basketball Federation and continues to dream of making a living from basketball, even if he is not playing professionally, but teaching and training others.
Cristian, 19, is the promoter of a social project called
‘Basketball on the move’ with which, from Malaga and Andalusia, he wants to convince the Endesa League to launch a pioneering initiative: a mobile basketball school, which will bring the sport of the basket to all those small towns where there are no clubs or infrastructures for being able to organize teams or training sessions. His idea stems from traveling between Malaga and Seville and verifying that in many small municipalities there was a demand for basketball training, but no means to carry them out. «In many of these towns they play football, but not basketball because there are no schools. So I told my parents the idea of being able to create a mobile school, which could unite children or adults from various small towns to be able to train and enjoy basketball”, he recounts.
It was his father who began to look for ways to give shape to that idea and found the initiative
Endesa Heart League, a social program of Endesa and the ACB that distributes up to 15,000 euros in prizes to support projects that have basketball as the engine of social or environmental change. «It would be the first mobile school in Spain, with the aim of leading sedentary lives to having an active and healthy lifestyle through basketball. My goal is to take basketball to all corners of Spain », he comments.
‘Basketball on the move’ is already among the five finalist initiatives of the program and now a popular vote that will begin in the coming weeks will help to choose the best project of all those presented to the ACB from different parts of Spain. Cristian has thought about all the aspects that he would need to make his dream come true, from the purchase of sports equipment or a van to the creation of a multidisciplinary team of support professionals such as doctors or nutritionists who can collaborate at the school. “The objective of the Endesa Heart League program is to change lives and the first life they would be changing would be mine, with the dream of being able to live by and for basketball,” concludes Cristian.
