 When I play basketball, I feel free, free that I've ever felt. It's a way to stop reality for a second and just tune into an action and expression. That's what basketball is to me, freedom. My name is Monop Mual. I'm the CEO and founder of Presidential Basketball, which is an organization that uses basketball as a tool to empower our youth. I'm a South Sudanese refugee and basketball is something that provided me an outlet to purge emotions that I couldn't understand coming from war trauma at a young age. My father and my mother had to flee the country with my family. So my experience as a young man coming to Canada, discovering the first time I realized I was black. Coming from a different country, I'd never seen color in my life. I just, I'm a human, you're a human, right? The first time I was calling and like just going home and like looking yourself after that experience and then looking at other black people and realizing that your shade's a lot darker than everyone else, right? And like growing up that was very, it was very tough, you know? It was very, very tough because you're looking around and no one looks like you. All that rage, all that pain, all that killing I saw at a young age like I got to see, I got to put that all on the court in a healthy environment. When we're playing basketball, labels dissolve. So I've never had anybody within any of my programs talk about being black, talk about being white, talk about being fat, talk about being thin. It's all human beings just on their simplest level interact with one another to win a game, you know, to get to a goal. I think that locks out all the labels and the misconceptions. And they're understanding that I can't win this game by myself because it takes five, right? And they're understanding how to use teamwork to accomplish whatever goals they need to. The older guys are starting to lead the younger guys. The younger guys are having more confidence to develop the and then they're also leading the next group of younger guys and it's just a cycle. It's like a beautiful cycle. You went through it, you gained your confidence, then you got better and now you're in a position where you can give that to somebody else. To see kids that come in shy and leave with friends is one of the best feelings ever. It takes a community to make a city great to accomplish all goals, to be successful people for us to heal one another. It takes a community!