Peter Bakare: The Olympian using mascots to teach children about health and nutrition 

It’s been a wild ride for Peter Bakare, Great Britain's London 2012 volleyball star who now promotes healthy lifestyles to children through mascots inspired by the Olympics.

Bakare first got into sports as a child in East London, when a group of monks from New York’s Bronx district set up a basketball court in his neighbourhood and encouraged the local children to take part in games.

“I always wanted to create my own animation but I found myself growing tall pretty quickly,” said the charismatic Londoner in an exclusive interview with Olympics.com. “In my area, they had these monks from America and they just loved to play basketball. They were giving out food donations, parcels to the families that needed them. So I was part of that…

“They put two basketball posts up and they let the kids in the area play any time they wanted, and that’s how I got into playing sports.”

Bakare always harbored two loves: sport and animation. He was an avid fan of comics growing up and continued to pursue both of his dreams, even after he began to progress to the elite levels of volleyball after his potential was spotted by his basketball coach.

By the time he was ready to go to University, Bakare was playing for Great Britain’s junior team. And with London 2012 on the horizon, he made the move to Sheffield, firstly to study animation at University but also to continue his progress as a sportsperson at the English Institute of Sport (EIS).

“I was nowhere near the men’s team but what I said was that I’ll study animation because I still love it,” the Olympian recalled. “So I studied animation at Sheffield University while training twice a day, every single day.

“If you imagine you’ve got Jessica Ennis, Anthony Joshua, the Sheffield Sharks - and we’re the volleyball team, all training in the same facility towards the Olympics and big tournaments.”

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London 2012 and the Olympic dream

With Bakare’s progress through the ranks of GB volleyball in full swing, the teenager was left with a difficult dilemma.

As he explained: “I was trying to make this decision between going down this path [university] and hopefully making my own animation one day, like the dream is, or do I take this one-in-a-lifetime opportunity?”

The once-in-a-lifetime opportunity was nothing less than the chance to represent his country on the Olympic stage, at a Games that would take place not only in his home country but also in the neighbourhood he grew up in.

Encouraged by a director who explained to him that while he could always return to animation, he would never get a chance like this to pursue his home Olympic dreams again, Bakare made the decision to focus on volleyball.

It was a choice that paid off handsomely.

As with so many Olympians, the London 2012 Games represented the high point in Bakare’s athletic career. He speaks passionately about those Olympics, recalling everything from the mood in the city - “you had that community back” - to the bright lights of the opening ceremony and the buzz of walking out with Team GB during the athlete’s parade.

“To sum it up, it was full circle because you literally come back to the same postcode but it’s a whole different world,” he said of the mood in London at the time, before adding: “I’ve left the country, I’ve travelled the world, I’ve gone through injury and then you come back to all the smiles on faces and you’re like, ‘yeah, this is home!’”

Bakare was raring to go when the Olympic volleyball tournament started. But his introduction to on-court action didn’t exactly go to plan.

“I'd just got into the squad so I was just happy to be there, but I was like, ‘you give me the chance and I’ll show you what I’m made of,’” he remembered. “He gave me the chance and the first ball I did went straight out the back (points skyward) and he took me off!”

At this point in the interview, Bakare burst into laughter. He remembers the low points of those Olympics with a sense of humour, but the memories of the games in which he played best remain hidden to him, perhaps too overwhelming to be easily recalled. The only thing he truly remembers is the enjoyment he felt.

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A second birth through the Olympic story

When Bakare ended his career as an athlete it led to some dark times in his life. At a loss as to what to do with himself, he felt empty.

“The only way I can describe it is like athletes are born twice,” he explained. “You know, once like everyone else is and then again when you say to yourself, ‘whoever you are is now retired.' You know your whole identity is an athlete, a volleyball player, and then you say ‘but I don’t know what to do.’”

But inspiration came from a familiar place for Bakare. Remembering his love for animation and working with children, he decided to start visiting educational facilities in the UK to share his life experiences.

“When I started going into schools it was using the Olympic journey to try and inspire the children and then I’d do some fitness and an activity with them,” he told us. “And I thought, there’s got to be a better way to make it more interactive.”

It was when he discovered the negative impact mascots associated with unhealthy food were having on children that Bakare came upon the idea that now forms the basis of his new vocation.

“You’ve got one in three children [that are obese] and the main causes are sugary foods, salty foods and bad fatty foods.

“There’s one more thing that children consume more than those things combined that causes obesity: media.

“And companies use this as marketing to children to get them to eat unhealthy foods. And if I was to say to you, ‘name me an unhealthy food mascot’, you just need to go down the cereal aisle or a fast food restaurant to see them.”

Struck by the prevalence of ‘unhealthy’ mascots and the lack of healthy alternatives, Bakare thought back to one type of mascot that has always stood for a healthy lifestyle.

“I thought to myself, ‘Oh my, there’s a set of mascots that appeal to children, are all about health and everything that’s good about trying to be the best that you can be: the Olympic mascots…

“So it was literally taking everything that I learned from the Olympics, fashioning the writing and animation to try to get children active and healthy and inspire them.”

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Teaching kids nutrition through Olympic-inspired mascots

Energised by the ideals of the Olympic mascots, Bakare started Nutri Troops, an animated interactive programme to teach children about healthy living.

Nutri Troops takes the idea of what happens to Olympic mascots in the four years between each Games and uses the stories to educate children.

“It’s a package box and it’s for club leaders and school teachers,” he explained of the initiative. "And it’s almost like Dungeons and Dragons, where the coaches, they’re the lead mentors, and the children taken on the character and they earn points for completing challenges.”

Now Bakare distributes the package boxes to schools during term time and children’s clubs during holidays with the aim of inspiring the next generation to live well by following in the footsteps of Olympic mascots.

And the message he wants to send to kids is also one that he learned from sport. Whether it’s living healthily or even following your dreams of becoming an Olympian, it all begins with believing in yourself.

“Whenever you come up against something that you want to say no to, you feel like you’re a little bit scared… any time you hear yourself saying 'I can’t' just add one more word: yet.”

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