Ballin’ for Peace is a nonprofit organization that couples live celebrity sports and entertainment performances with workshops at events held in the Greater Los Angeles Area and cities throughout the nation. The centerpiece of our activities is a celebrity basketball game, featuring current and former NBA players, street ball legends, influential community personalities, actors, musicians, and other performing artists. Ballin’ for Peace revolves around a celebrity platform because our engrossing athletic games and live performances are an irresistible magnet for people from many different backgrounds.
Celebrities are the attraction that draws our crowds. Once visitors are at an event, we flood them with continuous uplifting messages about their self-worth and the positive outcomes. At each Ballin’ for Peace event people of all ages have access to a wide array of onsite life skill training, educational material, and referral resources on a range of socially relevant issues. Our educational activities cover topics such as college admissions and financial support, employment opportunities, job retraining, digital technology, and health. We disseminate information in the form of printed material, videos at exhibit booths, speakers at mini-workshops, and celebrity pep talks.
Some of our professional staff are experts at teaching specific interventions to control violent tendencies, stay in school, practice family planning, improve parenting skills, resist gang affiliation, and stop crime. 
For many members of our audiences, a Ballin’ for Peace event is a profound life-changing experience. With entertainers, athletes, and our own network of life coaches assuring them that they can turn despair into hope, and failure into accomplishment, they begin to see themselves and the world in a fresh light. Even the affluent among our audiences who have no pressing financial concerns or critical social needs may feel the call to service and sign up to work as a volunteer with Ballin’ for Peace or with one of our partner organizations.
In keeping with our mission, the purpose of each Ballin’ for Peace event is to create a community celebration of life. We produce people-powered happenings of mutual empowerment where a can-do outlook prevails, and where respect for others, no matter what their station in life, becomes the order of the day and the basis for a newfound peace.
Built into all of our events is an ongoing violence prevention campaign focusing on peace as an attitude, state of mind, and approach to life. The philosophy behind this campaign resonates with our vision, and it permeates every aspect of our organization. The goal is to foster authentic self-esteem – and heightened empathy for others – in every person who attends a Ballin’ for Peace event so that he or she is personally motivated to become a constructive member of society.
