Our Current Campaign

Mathare Youth Sports Association (MYSA) provides a unique model for community development which, over the last tweny years, has been used by other community groups and NGOs throughout Kenya and in other ‘developing’ countries.Mathare Valley, with a population of 180,000 crammed into an area just 2 kilometres by 300 metres, is the oldest of Nairobi's slums. Situated less than 5km from the centre of Nairobi, it is part of the bigger Mathare slum area.

The Mathare Youth Sports Association is a self-help youth programme which has forged a unique relationship between sport (mainly soccer) and community development— demonstrating the remarkable capacity of even the poorest youth to organise their own sports leagues, and contribute to the development of their community. MYSA is run for and by the youth themselves. It currently operates in 16 zones with a registration of 735 boys’ teams and 294 girls’ teams and 124 different leagues, with a total membership of over 17,000 youth and volunteers. Each year more than 10,500 league matches are played. MYSA teams also participate in slum cleanups and other community-based activities, earning six points in the league standings for each community project completed. In addition to playing soccer, players from all Mathare teams (including the Mathare United professional team, Mathare Youth FC and Mathare United Women—now among the top and most popular teams in Kenya) are also trained and active field workers on AIDs prevention. Most of the hundreds of volunteer MYSA leaders, coaches and referees are 14—18 years old.

To read the full details of the MYSA project, download the report in PDF format here. You will need Adobe Reader for viewing it. If Adobe Reader is not installed on your computer, download it free here.