The Sports Programme – How It All Began
The sports programme was the first ever MYSA project. Started in 1987, the idea was to involve the kids within the Mathare area in active sports, mainly football. The programme was possible due to the diligent efforts of the kids and people like Gabriel Njoroge and Calvin Mbugua who helped to run junior football. Senior football was later formed from the Undugu Football Club. People like Lucas Mangoka, Joseph Otieno and Gerald Achieng made this possible.

At this juncture the sports fraternity was being managed by personalities like Bob Munro, Gabriel Njoroge, Chuma Saidi and Lucas Mangoka. The beginning of MYSA has solely been dependent on voluntary work pumped in by many - the many who appreciate and are sensitive to the environment. Suffice to say MYSA is the sum of its volunteers and volunteers make MYSA.

Sports League

Key Points

• Runs from March to December
• Involves boys and girls between 9 to over 18 years
• Involves a registration of between 900 to over 1000 teams annually, with a membership of over 14,000 youth
• Involves over 100 leagues
• Was the first sports league to award points for every successful community clean up
• Runs the sports league in a geographical area of 16 different zones
• Has over 800 boys and 200 girls teams playing over 8000 matches annually.

Key Achievements

• New participants join MYSA on an annual basis
• Through sport, MYSA has been able to fight poverty by creating job opportunities for the youth and involving them in a scholarship award programme that has kept most of the youth in school.
• Through sports MYSA has managed to create awareness on key social issues such as HIV/AIDS and drug abuse.
• First Kenyan team in the Norway Cup.
• First to combine sports with environment clean up.
• First self-help league by youth in the slum.
• Started Mathare United semi-professional team, which is also the first top team to train its players on HIV/AIDS awareness.
• MYSA hosts more that 70 teams from all over Kenya and neighbouring countries, for an annual international girls tournament
• The MYSA sports programme has been a model to other organizations in Africa and has offered consultancy services to countries such as Tanzania , Uganda , Botswana , Sudan , Zambia and South Africa by assisting them in initiating a similar programme, as well as offering coaching and refereeing courses.

Key Challenges

Since MYSA does not own any community field, the sports programme has to rely on good co-operation with community schools so as to be able to organise its activities.

Future Aims

• To possess our own fields.
• To fully equip our MYSA zones with all the required sports equipment
• To expand the sports programme to other areas in Kenya
• To incorporate sport for the disabled in our programme
• To have our own stadium
• To host an international youth exchange soccer tournament like the Norway Cup
• To decentralize and have offices in all the 16 MYSA zones
• To introduce other sporting activities apart from soccer