Love for the game opens doors for Mathare youth

By Bernard Muthaka

Bob Munro remembers a time when few organisations thought of sports as a serious development activity. Yet today, experts are considering using sports as a tool in dealing with the humanitarian crisis in Haiti.

Working 20 years ago as a senior policy advisor on environment Mathare.

One of the strategies to deliver development to the Mathare community was to set up a football league for boys below 12 years.

"Whenever I tried to persuade them to take sport for development seriously, the response I usually got was a polite smile followed by a quick shift to a more serious subject," says Munro.

So he stopped trying, and together with determined youth in the Mathare slums, they instead focused on proving their point.

"In retrospect, the refusal to acknowledge sport as a legitimate development activity was a blessing as Mathare Youth Sports Association (MYSA) was left alone to evolve solely in response to the needs of its members and the community.

"No one tried to seduce MYSA with funds to take on projects reflecting donor-driven priorities. Instead, MYSA remained focused only on the priorities of its own members," he says.

Another point of relief was that nobody in MYSA had to get familiar with the NGO trend of writing long reports to justify what it was doing, why it was doing it and with what "cost-effective" results.

"In fact, during our first decade, MYSA had so little money that everything MYSA did was always cost-effective, says Munro, who founded the youth organisation in 1987.

One of the very first strategies to deliver development to the Mathare community was the establishment of a football league for boys below 12 years. Due to shortage of funds then, it was agreed that the goalposts would be made with three-inch diameter pipes.

Water pipes

"We must make sure holes are drilled every two-feet through the pipes for the new goalposts," one young man told the brainstorming meeting, drawing puzzled looks from everyone else.

"If we don’t put holes in them" the youth politely replied, "then some people will steal our goalposts to use as water pipes," came the explanation.

The goalposts with holes drilled in are the perfect evidence of a project designed by local communities, an approach that MYSA has used so well to deal with specific problems in Mathare.

Today, youth in MYSA participate in the more than 10,000 football matches played during the weekends and school holidays during the year.

They also participate in many development activities, which maximise their talents and interests and provide opportunities for nurturing leadership skills, education for shielding children from exploitation and preparation for gainful employment.

Community activities are used to reward teams participating in the leagues.

For instance, teams, which win their matches, get three points while those, which complete their garbage clean-up projects, get six points. As the reward for clean-up is the same as winning two matches, the captains always ensure their players turn up for their team cleanup projects.

MYSA has also received international awards for its pioneering integration of sport and community service activities.

In 1992 for instance, MYSA initiative received the United Nations Environmental Programme Global 500 Award for environmental innovation/achievement. In 2008, MYSA received the London-based Score4Africa Award for the best, most innovative and environmentally sustainable project.

The high HIV infection rate and drug and substance abuse among the youth in the slums is associated with the high poverty levels and low employment.

Fighting drugs and Hiv/Aids

Over the years, MYSA has trained hundreds of young leaders aged between 13 and 20 years and top football players in the organisation on AIDs and substance abuse, prevention as well as peer counselling.

The tournaments and other activities are managed and run by the youth themselves.

Though MYSA has some full-time staff, voluntarism remains a core value and strength of the organisation and is still a dominant feature of MYSA’s different sports and community service activities.