{"id":118358,"date":"2025-09-04T13:55:07","date_gmt":"2025-09-04T13:55:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/118358\/"},"modified":"2025-09-04T13:55:07","modified_gmt":"2025-09-04T13:55:07","slug":"beyond-basketball-masai-ujiri-becomes-united-nations-sustainability-advocate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/118358\/","title":{"rendered":"Beyond Basketball: Masai Ujiri Becomes United Nations Sustainability Advocate"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s been a busy off-season for Masai Ujiri, and for the first time in a long time, it\u2019s not because of the Toronto Raptors. With his executive produced film, Origin: The Story of the Basketball Africa League, premiering at TIFF on September 8th<\/a>, the former Raptors president is set for a public splash in the entertainment industry. But, that\u2019s not the only area into which Masai is deepening his reach.<\/p>\n

Ujiri has recently been appointed a Sustainable Development Goal Advocate<\/a> by the United Nations, acting as an ambassador for the UN\u2019s SDG program. There are 17 total goals<\/a>, including the ending of poverty and hunger worldwide, as well as a number of commitments to environmental justice and social equality. Masai called his appointment \u201ca tremendous honor,\u201d as he enters a star-studded group of ambassadors including the Queen of Belgium and the President of Microsoft, as well as Toronto\u2019s own, content creator Lilly Singh. The former president\u2019s qualifications stem from his place as the head of Giants of Africa, a non-profit group centred around basketball, hosting camps, building courts<\/a>, and providing support to young people throughout Africa.<\/p>\n

Since his July 27th departure from the Toronto Raptors<\/a>, Masai Ujiri has shown no interest in leaving the world of sports, doubling down on his role as a figure in African basketball in the short term. However, the beginning of his role at the United Nations suggests a potential future as a part of the wider international community, beyond an exclusive focus on athletics.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s been a busy off-season for Masai Ujiri, and for the first time in a long time, it\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":118359,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[574],"tags":[64,63,726,1325,83777,85],"class_list":["post-118358","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-basketball","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-basketball","tag-general","tag-raptors-news","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118358","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=118358"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118358\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/118359"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=118358"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=118358"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=118358"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}