Basketball has always been an important part of Pascal Siakam's life, but inspiring and helping youth in his foundation has become just as significant.
Through his program, the PS43 foundation and the Data Dunkers, he has been able to preach data science through basketball.
“My foundation, the PS 43 Foundation, is on a mission to empower youth through education, to inspire them to be big dreamers,” Siakam said.
The power forward, who spent nine seasons with the Toronto Raptors and won a championship in one of those seasons, made an appearance at the Barrett Centre for Technology Innovation on Feb. 7 to speak about the program.
Siakam spoke highly about how much his family's support has meant to him and his NBA career.
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“I mean, I have amazing support from them, and I think without them I wouldn't be anything really and throughout the journey, they just always kept me grounded,” he said. “I'm definitely super blessed.”
The event was hosted in collaboration with Dell Technology and Siakam’s foundation.
It showcased the commitment to education and teaching basketball skills through stats and coding.
Katina Papulkas, a senior education strategist at Dell, explained how the positive collaboration with Siakam’s foundation came together over the last couple of years.
“So, what happened was, three years ago, his foundation, PS43, reached out to us to say, ‘what's possible, what might we do together,’" she said. They worked on the possibilities for about six months.
"And then we were like, basketball, stats, data science, let's go, and one thing led to another, we created the program together,” Papulkas said.
Students from different schools in the Dufferin-Peel Catholic District School Board were chosen to be a part of the event.
They were able to showcase skills that they had learned through the program.
Israel Akintabe had the opportunity to share a device that they created using a microbit band.
The device was a pocket-sized computer with an LED light display, buttons, and sensors, which detected proper or improper basketball shooting form.
Akintabe said he was happy he got to demonstrate it in front of Siakam.
“I felt like it was one of my dreams come true, because I've always wanted to meet a famous person,” he said.
Akintabe said the combination of basketball and data jump-started his excitement to join the Data Dunkers program.
“Because I realized you were doing something, including data, and basketball together, which is my favourite thing,” he said.
Scott Briggs, the vice president for digital innovation and the Chief Information Officer at Humber, praised the improvement that he saw from the event this year and hopes the growth of the event can continue in the coming years.
“Last year was terrific. A lot of students, and I was thrilled to be a part of that,” he said. “This year, I think we've improved it considerably, and hopefully next year we'll do that.”
