We recently connected with Garry Mills and have shared our conversation below.
Garry, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Let’s kick things off with your mission – what is it and what’s the story behind why it’s your mission?
Our mission is to use basketball as a vehicle to change and save lives.
The reason why this mission is so meaningful because I have created an organization, Shoot Basketballs NOT People to combat gun violence in the inner city but more importantly created a safe haven for the youth of my city.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
Organization/Brand: Shoot Basketballs NOT People
Problem Solving: Combating gun violence and creating sustainable youth sports programming via Basketball
What sets us apart is our willingness to step outside the box with programming ideas and develop creative and new communication strategies with the youth
We are most proud of impacting 1300 youth between Philadelphia, PA, Akron, OH and Columbus, OH
We want people to know that we actually care about the well being and safety of of youth especially in the inner city and introducing them to mindfulness practices can decrease the amount of murders happening right now and being able to show them a new way of life away from their environment
Also, we will be launching “Bad Things Happen In Philadelphia” on the streaming platform, FOX Soul on December 2nd, 2023 at Noon.
Can you talk to us about how your funded your business?
In the beginning stages of SBNP, there was no support financially from my city, Philadelphia until recently and I self funded my entire organization for 10 years.
We’d love to hear the story of how you turned a side-hustle into a something much bigger.
This organization started as a community basketball game to bring awareness to the gun violence in my neighborhood and never had intentions of creating an organization until I seen the turnout which was 400+ people.
So fast forward, SBNP is currently about to release a documentary, Bad Things Happen in Philadelphia which tells the story of how impactful this organization has been the last 10 years and has won numerous awards like Best Featured Documentary in 5 out of the last 6 film festivals we were selected in. My first cousin, Kyra Knox is the director and producer of this film in addition to Executive producers Hall of Famer Allen Iverson and 2 time Grammy Award winning Mark Mims
Contact Info:
- Website: www.Joinsbnp.org
- Instagram: Joinsbnp
- Linkedin: Linkedin.com/garrymills
- Twitter: Joinsbnp
Image Credits
Memories Over Everything TRP Visuals