More than a dozen lucky boys, all of them One Team participants, were delighted with an opportunity to welcome their favorite Euroleague stars to the court before the tip-off between signature Russian clubs Khimki Moscow Region and CSKA Moscow that officially opened the Top 16 on Tuesday.

It was yet another celebration on Europe's basketball biggest stage for One Team Khimki, which has a lot to celebrate about this season. That is especially true after the news that the Khimki Moscow Region Department of Education has incorporated the club's One Team programme into its current municipal efforts to help the development of sport among youth through educational and recreational activities.

Thanks to this new partnership, several secondary schools can simultaneously be involved in Khimki's One Team programme. This also allows the club to grow the number of schools and students in the One Team project, which addresses the needs of ordinary local school children. Sessions conducted every two weeks during school physical education lessons give children a quick and easy opportunity to experience One Team educational practices, utilizing the power of basketball to illustrate life lessons, self-esteem and social skills, among other values.

This expansion also means that there are currently three groups of children benefitting from Khimki's One Team programme. In November, the club’s One Team Ambassador, Vitaly Nosov, started holding weekly sessions with an experimental class of 14-year-old boys at the local Secondary School #27. It is a single, unique class formed entirely of teenage boys who were removed from their previous study groups due to various behavioral problems.

"Basketball is a reflection of life just like any other of our activities, with the same forces being at work," says Nosov, a former basketball great who was moved and motivated by the possibility to help these kids through basketball and, most importantly, personal communication.

"The children I am working with are those one could call troubled young men, who suffer from turbulent family situations, too often left with no parental guidance in their studies or in life in general. As a result, these boys end up behaving in controversial ways in order to draw the attention of others or simply because they need to have a discharge for their frustrations. What I am doing is providing them with the premise to better themselves through basketball. The passing of the ball to one's teammate is the same as sharing with one's friend. Scoring the ball on a well-executed shot, a win in a competition or a simple drill is the result of good team effort. Along with the basic basketball drills we do together, I try to communicate to them how they can be better individuals if they transfer their behavior on court to everyday life. My aim is to open up these boys' eyes, get them interested in sport, and thus to make their lives more interesting."

One Team is the corporate social responsibility programme created by Euroleague Basketball to use the power of basketball as a tool to integrate at-risk communities in 12 countries through grass-roots activities that have reached more than 10,000 participants to date thanks to the help of One Team Founding Patron Turkish Airlines.