Slums, football and FIFA

It seems that there is more than just corruption and poverty coming out of the slums of Nairobi. There is also a model for community youth football that has recently been adopted by FIFA as the model for community sports programs to spread across Africa. The Mathare Youth Sports Association has been running for around 20 years, and has grown into an amazing community program encompassing sport, health education, community outreach, leadership and skills training, and environmental concerns. They now run the largest boys youth football league in Africa, with around 13,000 registered players. This together with an equally impressive (perhaps more so, with the gender roles as they are in Kenya) though smaller girls competition.

This is the model that both Thika United and myself are hoping to replicate in the Thika area, my pet project for the next nine months. Me thinks I've got a lot of work to do...