Mathare Youth Sports Association

Mathare is one of the largest, most densely populated, and poorest urban slums on the African continent, where roughly 900,000 residents live in makeshift shelters with a critical lack of municipal infrastructure and services – such as electricity, clean water and sanitation – that are essential for public health and safety. Without access to public education, Mathare youth historically have had few pathways out of severe material poverty.

MYSA was founded in 1987 by Bob Munro, a Canadian United Nations advisor who had observed the energy and enthusiasm of young boys in Mathare kicking around a juala football made of old plastic bags and string. Harnessing football as a vehicle for self-help and community development, Munro launched a youth-run league where older players coach and referee younger players, and teams earn league points by collecting trash and clearing blocked drainage ditches in Mathare.

From its inception MYSA grew rapidly, fueled almost entirely by youth and community participation – and a tremendous desire to play football. Overcoming significant gender barriers, the organization added a girls’ football league in 1992 and has since achieved near-gender parity at the leadership level. As it attracted funding from Kenyan and international donors, MYSA continued to expand the scope of its activities, introducing an HIV/AIDS prevention program, arts initiatives, a slum libraries project, work readiness training and more. Over time, MYSA has extended its impact well beyond Mathare, helping to establish similar youth sports and community service projects in Kakuma Refugee Camp in northwestern Kenya, as well as in Botswana, Tanzania, Uganda and southern Sudan.

MYSA is recognized as an early pioneer of the now global Sports for Development and Peace (SDP) Movement, which embraces sports as a mechanism for advancing UN Sustainable Development Goals. In a report for the 2010 Commonwealth Sports Development Conference, Bob Munro affirmed, “MYSA youth leaders…pioneered and proved to sceptics…that sport, especially when combined with community service, [does] provide a new, practical and powerful starting point for involving youth directly in improving their own lives and communities.” Through their commitment to civic engagement and mutual cooperation, MYSA youth develop the skills and confidence to help themselves – and each other – shape healthy and fulfilling lives that transcend the limiting circumstances into which they were born.

Contributor: Erin Brown