Kenya: KYFA
What is the aim of your program?
The program is built around two pillars. Firstly we believe that by creating an enabling environment for competition, young people will be encouraged to form a football team for which children and youth are recruited with whom they train every day in preparation for the weekly competition matches. Within this context an enabling environment means, good fields, reliable registration systems, skilled referees and efficient management.
Secondly, we believe that the teams are avenues for and their leaders are agents of youth development. By building their capacity, KYFA pursues to improve the welfare of children and youth. We hope that KYFA teams will turn into their positive peer groups recognized throughout the community.
How many coaches/volunteers work for your program?
We have about 120 coaches and a total of around 300 total volunteer including coaches, team managers, first aid workers and referees.
What social problems does your program address? (e.g. health, conflict etc)
Our programs address a myriad of issues through a curriculum we have developed called Informed Decision Making. We have trained over 100 youth leaders (team captains or team “social” leaders) on the skills to make informed decisions. We also give them pertinent information relating to health, HIV/AIDS, sexuality, child rights, drugs/alcohol, child labor, education and citizenship. Since we don’t have the expertise and it isn’t our main objective to just train on these topics, we instead approach the youths by equipping them with skills to know how to go about making decisions and dealing with the consequences.
The trained youth leaders hold weekly sessions with their teammates to discuss relevant issues that team members are facing. The teams discuss and are lead by their trained leader. This is how we hope to go about transforming our team into positive peer groups. Kids will still be coming every day to play soccer, but they will also gain social knowledge out of their sessions and be able to support their teammates in many capacities.
In the last two years, our organization has begun to address issues of peace-building following the post-election violence in Kenya in early 2008. Kisumu was a hotbed for controversy and rioting. This type of behavior was mostly displayed by young uneducated youth who were easily influenced by politicians. In an effort to prevent this type of violence in the 2012 election, we have started incorporating peace-building into the youth leader curriculum as well.
Tell us some of the things that you would do in a normal soccer education session with the children?
Our coaches are trained on the technical issues of football, not so much the social side. Almost all of our 130 teams train on a daily basis, with tactical skills as the main objective. We are hoping to be able to collaborate with Coaches Across Continents to build the social training part of our soccer education.
As an organization, we do not directly interact with each team on a daily basis, but instead provide competitions and capacity building for each of the teams in the hopes that they will be able to stand on their own some day.
How many children take part in your program?
This past season we had 2,300 children who participated in our leagues.
