15 Dec Awards win ‘inspiring’ for Peace Ballers
The director and founder of Peace Ballers has said winning Business of the Year at the Southwark Business Excellence Awards will help the company on its journey to be innovative and help even more people across the borough.
Zion Zachary, who set up the football enterprise in May 2019, also won Entrepreneur of the Year for his role in mentoring young people to tackle youth crime in the borough.
Using football as a way to bring young people together, Peace Ballers uses mentoring to develop enterprising skills in young people.
The business was born out of Zion’s dissertation, which he wrote at Brunel University. The idea was put on hold while he studied for a Masters Degree at Middlesex University, before picking it back up once that was completed.
“I parked it (the idea) so I could focus on developing my own skills – being able to maintain a business financially and managing a team in a stable company.
“All the effort of developing myself paid off – four weeks after starting, got a contract with the Mayor of London, which was successful enough to be renewed a second time, for twice as long, and then a third time, for three times as long.
“It’s been an upwards climb for the past year and a bit.”
With the COVID-19 pandemic stopping the business’ activities, Zion and Peace Ballers asked the question of what could they do to ensure they could keep doing what they had been doing so successfully, with greater resilience. That’s when EVOE was born.
Zion will be launching a new football team, Peace Ballers FC, which fans will be able to support through EVOE – a new live event streaming platform to help, in his own words, “democratise football.”
“We’ll be setting up a professional team that will participate in the FA Cup, to help put a greater spotlight on the untapped potential of grassroots football. EVOE is a new digital platform that will allow grassroots clubs to monetise their popularity through streaming, shirt sales, ticket sales, etc.
“It will hopefully democratise football and create more opportunities for players to start earning money – even if they don’t make it to the very top.
“If anything, lockdown enabled us to stop and think and be innovative.”
Although still in development, the platform is due to launch early next year and clubs and events organisers are showing an interest in using it.
Zion said the awards win would give the company and the new platform more credibility.
“For EVOE it gives us credibility. Some people still need to be persuaded on solutions, even when they’re staring them right in the face and this awards win will help us along that journey. Being able to put the awards wins on our email signatures and on marketing materials is such a boost.”
This was the first time Zion and Peace Ballers had entered the awards. Zion went to the launch earlier in the year to network and meet other businesses in the borough.
“As I was leaving someone said to me you should enter,” he said. “They might have been an angel!”
After being named Entrepreneur of the Year, Zion and the team were enjoying watching the evening come to a close when Peace Ballers was named Business of the Year.
“I was so confused – I didn’t expect to hear our own name! I was so shocked but it was amazing.”
Reflecting on the award, Zion said: “Personally, it’s been a very tough, challenging year. My background of having so many different challenges, growing up in care and always having to fix things and carrying that trait of problem solving into business has paid off.
“Winning an award and being recognised for that is very touching and it’s really inspiring to know what I am doing is important. Seeing the value of that is touching.”
For more information on Peace Ballers, visit www.peaceballers.com