Over 3,000 apply for FIBA World Cup volunteers

MANILA, Philippines — The overwhelming response to the call for FIBA World Cup volunteers is a positive sign that the country is excitedly awaiting to stage the event on Aug. 25 to Sept. 10. Over 3,000 have so far applied to join since Samahang Basketbol ng Pilipinas (SBP) and the FIBA World Cup 2023 Local Organizing Committee launched the Volunteers Program last Wednesday. The goal is to choose 500 “highly-motivated” volunteers for the Philippine leg where 16 teams will play in the preliminaries, eight in the quarterfinals, four in the semifinals and two in the final. Co-hosts Japan and Indonesia will hold preliminaries of eight teams each. At the 12-team FIBA Women’s World Cup in Australia recently, 350 volunteers were mobilized.

Volunteers Program head Art Aro said applicants must be 18 by Aug. 1 next year and senior citizens are encouraged to enlist. “A volunteer has to render service for a minimum of 10 shifts with each shift six to eight hours,” he said. “Official FIBA World Cup Nike uniforms will be provided. A fixed amount of P500 a day will be given to cover transportation costs. Meals will be provided as well as a one-time P500 load allowance from Smart. Accreditation IDs with volunteer access will be issued.”

Aro said volunteers will be assigned specific functional areas of responsibility based on their skill set, including Games Services, Venues, International Relations and Protocol, Safety and Security and FIBA World Congress. There will be no cross-posting or multiple assignments so volunteers are able to focus on their specialization. Aro said a two-part training program will be rolled out to prepare the volunteers. “Training modules are now being developed with the length of training a half-day for each session,” he said. “The two parts are customer experience highlighting the Filipino brand of hospitality and specific role training.”

Aro said applicants are required to fill up forms to detail their reason for volunteering, work experience and preferred functional areas at https://philippines-volunteers.worldcup.basketball. “We’ll schedule either an online or face-to-face interview with shortlisted applicants and further trim down the list based on the interviews and schedule them for customer experience training,” he said. “Specific role training will then be conducted by the functional areas for a more detailed briefing and orientation on duties and expectations during game time.”

Volunteers Program ambassador and PBA player Larry Fonacier said he’s “super looking forward to bridging and connecting the old team with the current group of youngsters.” He noted, “Being part of the Gilas team that qualified for the WC automatically made me and the others ambassadors … we are all ambassadors for this monumental sporting event.”