Support PLAAY South New Orleans

The Mission

To support children and young people towards developing the skills to navigate racial stress and conflict and make meaningful social, emotional, and academic progress.

The Vision

Build sustainable PLAAY programs throughout the city of New Orleans and across the country.

Our Why

While many children in New Orleans and beyond are thriving, many are struggling to survive, falling behind academically, and demonstrating physical aggression, verbal aggression, classroom elopement, and property destruction. Many children, likely due to the systems created to oppress them, have not yet developed the skills necessary to manage stress, assert themselves safely, and resolve conflict with peers, family, teachers, and additional figures of authority. Unfortunately, these behaviors often lead to suspensions, expulsions, truancy, encounters with the Juvenile Justice system, and ultimately hopelessness. We know that bias and false narratives are contributing to these outcomes and are disproportionately harming Black children. But we can help.

Bringing together basketball and Racial Literacy framework, Dr. Howard Stevenson’s PLAAY Intervention uses mindfulness stress reduction, journaling, storytelling, role-playing, and debate strategies to teach children self-regulation, assertiveness, and problem-solving skills to protect themselves from racial stress and to safely navigate through moments of stress and conflict on the court, in the classroom and community. We engage in difficult conversations in PLAAY around our lived experiences and identities and practice using words to express and assert ourselves. We play games where we practice managing stress and asserting ourselves during real-life moments of conflict, success, and failure that occur naturally on the court. We acknowledge that we don’t know the unique needs of each community we work with. So, we train community members to deliver PLAAY and create environments that support skill development, leveraging the relationships and expertise that already exist within the community.

Your Donation's Impact: