On behalf of 3X3 Unites, six young people and four trainers traveled to the Festival 24. In the two days leading up to the festival, 3X3 Unites teamed up with DUNK Grassroots from Ghana to deliver multiple high quality and professional workshops within their 'United by Sports Training' to the 72 'young leaders' of each delegation. The goal: to train the young delegation leaders so they could deliver 24 sports activities to young people during the Festival that promote inclusivity and gender equality.

The workshops conducted by 3X3 Unites in collaboration with DUNK Grassroots from Ghana (three trainers) included life skills, inclusivity, gender equality, positive coaching, guarding boundaries as a leader, storytelling, Olympic values and the history of the Olympics. “In this way we want to make the young leaders comfortable and give them confidence and skills,” said Maxi Sellering on behalf of 3X3 Unites.

Nana Tuffour Okai attended on behalf of DUNK Grassroots. 'It was very interesting. It was the first time for me to be able to interact with young leaders from all over the world,' he says. 'I found it very inspiring to talk to other young leaders, for example about inclusiveness. And the collaboration with 3X3 Unites is one of the best collaborations I've had so far, so I'm looking forward to taking on more projects with them. Not only in Europe, but also in Africa and in particular in Ghana.'

Karin from 3X3 Unites is equally enthusiastic about the cooperation with DUNK: 'Other, real, highlights for me were getting to know the people from Dunk, the conversations during my workshop on Olympic values and afterwards hearing that young leaders use these values in their sports activity. All in all, I thought it was a super fat weekend, with a really fun Unites group and actually can't wait for the next one!'

24-year-old Sam from the United States participated in all seven workshops. She works for New York City Park's Foundation, which provides free sports programs for children in New York's parks. From tennis to soccer to golf to a variety of other sports. “I really enjoyed it and learned a lot,” she says.

Sam says she learned many things that she can put into practice in New York. “I found it interesting how I can use sports to develop my life skills and how to promote gender equality in sports, so you can still have people of different levels playing sports with each other.

Also participating in the workshops was 26-year-old Menna Mohamed from Egypt. She works for the organization International Sports Alliance (ISA). Gender equality is one of the important themes within ISA. “It was very interesting to hear the stories of other young delegation leaders with different backgrounds.

She notes that there were differences and similarities. 'That was a lot of fun to experience,' she says. 'That's also what sports is all about: differences and similarities.'

When asked what she takes back to her own organization in Egypt? 'All the activities were generally very inclusive. For example on gender equality, that was very interesting. I want to see if we can also apply that in Egypt and in our programs.'