Description
The Mathare area in Kenya contains one of the largest and poorest slums in Africa with several hundred thousand inhabitants, of which over 70 per cent are women and children. Disease is widespread and AIDS has stolen the lives of many in the community. Yet from such unlikely surroundings has sprung an idea which is so uplifting that it has become a model for many other communities around the world - an idea which in 2003 and 2004 received the ultimate accolade of being nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Since 1987, the Mathare Youth Sports Association (MYSA) has pioneered the use of football as a tool to encourage co-operation, raise self-esteem and promote physical and environmental health in the Mathare community. At the heart of MYSA are football leagues located throughout the slum with tens of thousands of young people participating in boys as well as girls teams. In 1999, MYSA initiated a similar sports and development project in the Kakuma Refugee Camp in north west Kenya.
MYSA was the very first project supported by the Laureus Sport for Good Foundation back in 2000 and the partnership continues as strongly as ever today.
An example of the imaginative ways in which this self-help project achieves its goals is the MYSA slum clean-up programme in which teams clear the rubbish and ditches around their homes every weekend. For every completed clean-up project a team earns six points in the league standings. MYSA received the United Nations Environment Programme Global 500 Award for environmental innovation and achievement during the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janiero.
MYSA works to prevent drug and alcohol abuse, teenage pregnancy, gender discrimination as well as promoting education, HIV/AIDS prevention, and environmental awareness; issues which all are compounded by unemployment and poverty in the Mathare community. Young people who have been involved in MYSA since the beginning of the project have become role models and youth leaders in their community. Hundreds of these young leaders have received special training and now lead HIV/AIDS awareness, prevention and counselling programmes.
MYSA is owned and managed by the young people themselves. Of the several hundred elected MYSA officials and volunteer leaders and coaches, the average age is 15 to 16. The project assists the youngsters to stay in school through leadership awards that are given to participants that show an exemplary work ethic on and off the sports field. Leaders in the community also attend coaching and leadership workshops and are required to complete 60 hours of community service every month. Although MYSA is often misunderstood as largely a sports organisation, the real long-term aim of MYSA is to help young people acquire the leadership, governance and project management skills and experience to actively help build the new Kenya.
