Mission

Center for Sports and Growth (CSG) is a community-based organization that seeks to empower women, children and youth by enabling them acquire necessary knowledge and skills with the sole intention of improving and uplifting their living standards but more importantly helping them attain their dreams and aspiration through use of sports as a tool to engender broad social-economic issues that affect the community. Founded in 2020 in the Mathare area which is one of Africa’s largest and poorest slums, Center for Sports and Growth (CSG) works in the neighboring Eastleigh area and is among the organizations linking sports, and movement games with social improvement, Refugee Integration with host communities, women empowerment and community development activities such as slum garbage clean-ups, environmental improvement, Water sanitation and Hygiene Awareness activities, menstrual hygiene awareness, Human rights advocacy, Mental Health awareness, drug and drug abuse, crime prevention, and HIV/AIDs prevention. 1.Our Vision. To be the leading model in Africa that nurtures and develops children and youth to reach their maximum potential. 2.Our Mission • To create education opportunities for members to learn and grow through sports. • To empower children and youth in acquiring knowledge and skill in order to improve their livelihood. • To create role models from our members. • To unite people (Local and from the world) and empower them through sports. 3.Our Purpose for Existence 1) To empower children and youth as our next generation talent 2) To provide equal opportunity of growth in a sustainable manner 3) To create a better community and world in a collaboration sharing process 4.Our Values 1) Beneficiary First This basically means that the project starts with the beneficiary then works backwards. We work vigorously to earn and keep beneficiaries’ trust. We respond to the needs of our beneficiaries 2) Sustainability We think long term and don’t compromise long-term values for short term results 3) Creativity and simplicity We encourage innovation and inventions for problem solving from our team members and always simplify. 4) Continuous Learning We encourage members of the organization and team leaders to continuously learn and seek to improve themselves 5) Think Big We encourage leaders to create and communicate bold directions that inspire results 6) Frugality Accomplish more with less. Constraints breed resourcefulness, self-sufficiency and invention. 7) Hire and develop local youth We aim to raising the performance bar with every hire and promotion. We prioritize our members and recognize exceptional talent in every employment opportunity that arises and hence develop deliberate succession plans throughout the organization. 5. Target Beneficiaries • Team leaders and coaches and youth and children between 10-35 years • Local Community 6. Projects Brief Center for Sports and Growth is a community-based organization that uses sports as a tool for community development. The organization uses sports and particularly football as an innovative and effective way for youth to get involved in helping themselves and their communities. In addition, the organization also runs other programs such as Education, Health, Environment, Climate Change, and Advocacy initiatives that are all focused on responding to the specific needs of our community. The project does not work independently but rather also explores for potential opportunities for integration with other like-minded initiatives that front the development agendas of the community as the number one priority. We aim at developing a website for our organization that will help support our fundraising and one that is able to elaborate who we are ,what we do and why we do what we do. We would also wish to request for assistance in developing a business card for the team.

Category

Education and Skills

Additional Information

1 Sports Our sports program involves boys and girls in various age grades and does not discriminate against gender, race, religion or sexual orientation. We focus on running a league for under 12 to 16 years. The league runs from March to December and it involves over 1000 youths registered in more than 65 teams annually. We aim to increase women participation in sports as well as creating exposure for our players through annual local and international youth exchange programs and tournaments. We also equip our youth with sports trainings such as coaching, refereeing, first aid and injury prevention trainings hence increasing their opportunities for getting employment as coaches, referees and physios in the sports sector. According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), 80% of people with disabilities in the world are living in developing countries like Kenya. We aim to break the disability barriers by organizing sports activities and events for people living with disability and promote inclusion as well as create awareness in our community that is focused on abilities first. We partner with community schools that have special category class for kids dealing with different disability and therefore we utilize the expertise and competence of the trained teachers to organize special sporting activities for the various categories depending on the type of disability. Our sports program in Eastleigh main aims at creating a harmonious peaceful co-existence between the refugees and the host community. We aim to smoothly integrate the refugee community leaving in Eastleigh with the host community through use of sports as a tool. 2 Environment and Climate Change Mathare with a population of over 500,000 is largely characterised by families that average 5 members living in tiny, squalid shanty shacks. These homes generally lack proper ventilation, plumbing, indoor toilets, electricity and garbage collection. Further the said homes are susceptible to harsh weather and are largely a fire hazard owing to the materials they are made from. Uncollected garbage remains a challenge in this community but in it lays an opportunity to help the Mathare community transform from its current status quo to a new normal that provides clean and safe spaces transformed into functional and productive communities. In addition to playing matches every weekend our youth teams undertake garbage collection and tree planting as well as create awareness on environmental conservation and climate change among the wider community. Collecting garbage and opening up blocked sewage lines helps reduces spread of diseases such as malaria, cholera dysentery and cases of deaths among children. 3 Education Our education program is very central to our focus on nurturing role models. We aim at creating education opportunities for our members by offering academic scholarships that enables us to educate poor and needy children from our slums. We also focus on employability and transfer of skills by linking experienced and knowledgeable people with the non-experienced so that they can learn and acquire technical skills that they can depend on in sustaining their livelihood. As an organization we encourage young people to take up leadership position in our community and therefore we do leadership trainings, mentorship and also organize for motivational talks in order to empower youth in our community. Entrepreneurship is an integral part of the training that we undertake as a project as this helps to equip young people with skills for managing their day-to-day small-scale businesses. 4 Health There are more young people living now than at any other time in history of the world. And about nine in 10 young people around the world live in less developed countries. However, despite being a significant part of the world’s population, young people do not readily always have the opportunity to participate in society at the same level as adults. When it comes to sexual and reproductive health rights, we appreciate that it’s often young people who face the greatest burden. They are disproportionately affected by HIV, and AIDS, teen pregnancies, unsafe abortion, STIs and other health issues. Our health program focuses on promoting behaviour change among youth using different tools to pass and disseminate information. We use fun and game-based approaches to pass information to young people on drug and drug abuse, HIV/Aids, Menstrual hygiene management, Mental health and other health related issues affecting our community. We also create safe spaces for sexual reproductive health education among young people. Here they are able to freely ask any question and have an open conversation with their peer educators hence shape conversations surrounding myths and facts about specific health issue .5 Human Rights and Advocacy Our advocacy program works in partnership with rights-based organizations that are based in the slums. We encourage young people from our community to seek elective leadership positions and also ensure that there are actively involved in decision making processed that determine development priorities for our community. We advocate for rights to basic services such as water, education, security, proper housing, sanitation and hygiene facilities etc. We also create awareness on anti-child labour and human trafficking as well for peaceful and mutual co-existence in the slum community.