GLOBAL GOODWILL AMBASSADORS

The Harlem Globetrotters are an American exhibition basketball team that combine athleticism and entertainment in their style of play. Coordination and skillful handling of one or more basketballs are hallmarks of their act. Over almost a century, they have played more than 26,000 exhibition games in 124 countries, mostly against deliberately ineffective opponents, such as the Washington Generals and the New York Nationals. The Globetrotters originated in 1926, in Chicago, from where all the original players came. By 1929, however, the team was renamed the "New York Harlem Globe Trotters" (Harlem being then perceived as the epicentre of Black culture in the USA).

The Globetrotters have since played an integral part in popular culture appearing in movies and TV series and have even been rendered as a cartoon (in a hugely popular Hanna-Barbera series). The documentary Harlem Globetrotters: The Team that Changed the World featured interviews with fans such as Barack Obama, and Henry Kissinger - himself an honorary Globetrotter (along with Nelson Mandela and Pope Francis). The Harlem Globetrotters: Play it Forward, TV series has aired since 2022 on NBC, showcasing off-court visits as "ambassadors of goodwill" on their tours as well as on-court antics. For FAO, the Harlem Globetrotters have visited a school feeding project in the Dominican Republic and made motivational videos in Rome on the themes of nutrition and food waste reduction.