For mobilizing resources and accelerating our transition to sustainable development, youth are our greatest untapped resource. This includes even some of our poorest youth. For example, in large urban slums uncol-lected garbage is a major environmental problem and cause of the high rates of diseases, disabilities and deaths, especially among the children. However, in 1988 in the huge Mathare slums in Nairobi the youth linked up with the city authorities to help clear garbage nearly every weekend since then ... The Government will explore the possibilities for supporting similar youth self-help sports and environmental improvement pro-grammes in other slums, communities and rural areas.

In Nairobi, the City Council collected only a quarter of the nearly 340 thousand tonnes of garbage generated in 1992. Most severely affected are those in large slums where uncollected garbage is a major cause of the high rates of diseases, disabilities and deaths, especially among children. However, in the Mathare slums the youth linked up with the Nairobi City Council to clear garbage every weekend since 1988 …. the Government in collaboration with Urban Councils and NGOs, will further strengthen such initiatives, and extend them to all urban areas in the country.

In the darkest depths of Nairobi's urban jungle, a group of sports-mad youngsters is waging war against the so-cial and environmental scourges of life in the slums …. The powerful impact that MYSA has made on so many impoverished Kenyan lives needs to be replicated throughout the continent. As Africa's slums continue to grow, bringing with them all manner of social and environmental scourges, organizations like MYSA will play an ever important role in the future wellbeing of our society.

The Mathare Youth Sports Association demonstrates how, through a judicious combination of sporting and educational activities, young men and women can overcome traditional gender biases and relate to one anoth-er with mutual respect and understanding.

The idea that slums are not part of our lives and that little good can come out of them was shattered on Octo-ber 10th when a soccer team comprising young slum dwellers, Mathare United, became the first non-Premier League side in Kenya's history to win the Moi Golden Cup …. Mathare United's stunning victory was a tri-umph of hope over despair and a resounding assertion of the resourcefulness of the human spirit when given a fighting chance.

Mathare United has earned many "firsts" in Kenyan football. For example, they are the youngest to play in the Moi Golden Cup and the only team in Kenya with players trained and working as HIV/AIDS awareness, coun-selling, prevention and care. They are also the first football team in Kenya with players serving as active coaches and referees for matches involving younger players. Apart from sports, the youths in this programme also engage in community clean-ups to try and rid the slums of mountains of garbage …. Mathare United are well aware of the task that awaits them as they make their debut into big time football next year. They are un-der no illusions of their chances to go beyond their first opponents. Even if they do not, they and most Ken-yans feel that by defying almost insurmountable odds to win this trophy, they have made a point. And this point is that well planned and executed youth soccer programmes are the way forward for Kenyan football.

MYSA's emphasis on youth participation is its most unique and exciting aspect. It is a program for the youth and run by the youth. MYSA is founded on principles carefully formulated by the youth themselves. It prides itself on accountable and transparent management and a set of ethics, team and peer pressure and role models that are applied both on and off the playing field …. One of the major strengths is the principle of respect of member's contribution, no matter how small.

I have had a brilliant day at MYSA. There is no despair here. They are doing something that's really worth-while and I think that they will be an inspiration to everyone and every other community like this. I've felt great all day and I have met people who know they are going somewhere. It's sensational, there's no feeling like it.

MYSA is different to other aid organizations as its 'core business' is sports. Inside there are no sociologists walking around, only young people in tracksuits and MYSA shirts …. MYSA is the largest young people's of its kind in Africa …. The unusual thing about MYSA is that it is run by the young people - most of the many hun-dreds of voluntary coaches, referees and officials are younger than 16 years old.

Fixed in our minds is often the idea that slum dwellers are incapable or unwilling to improve their condition. This cynical idea is refuted by a photographic collection of pictures taken by the kids from the Mathare valley slum that are published in "Shootback". The images powerfully support calls for increased efforts to help the urban poor, now estimated as reaching 1 billion worldwide. However, the pictures do not just portray a des-perate situation but also document efforts by the slum dwellers to improve their conditions …. By showing the humanity and dignity of the slum dwellers, the children's images challenge all concerned with urban and set-tlement issues to find innovative ways for swift action to lessen the adversity faced by those living in slums.

MYSA has been a pioneer in many respects. It has been on the forefront in defining the links between youth development and environmental issues in sub-Saharan Africa and it has been one of the only youth sports or-ganizations in Africa that has encouraged girls' participation …. Through its efforts we have begun to see how sports can serve as an entry point for social development and for the transformation of gender norms.

Over the years MYSA has grown into a large, self-sustaining development organization that operates - in addi-tion to an extensive football program - an HIV/AIDS education program, a photography project, an education-al scholarship program and numerous other community service and environmental education projects. Incor-porating girls into its programs has helped to validate MYSA as an association for all young people - not just boys.

The team kicking up the red dust on a grassless pitch in Mathare, Kenya, is not a group of boys emulating their superstar heroes but of girls, blazing a trail for female participation in the world’s most popular sport …. From the outset MYSA linked sport with the environment – young people organized themselves not only into foot-ball teams and leagues but also into garbage clean-up squads. MYSA’s growth was tremendous, indicating how desperately the programme was needed. Today, MYSA sponsors hundreds of football teams. In addition, it of-fers educational scholarships, runs an extensive and much needed HIV/AIDS education programme, a photog-raphy project, as well as numerous other community-service initiatives.

MYSA has had a major impact on young people in general and has become the biggest youth movement in Af-rica to link sport with development activities. This has generated a unique youth culture that is based on the young people's strengths. Whereas 15 years ago many young people from Mathare valley were irresistibly drawn to the streets, now it is hip to join MYSA. The players in the various teams are ambassadors and are also active as volunteers in Mathare valley. They visit prisons, hold football clinics at schools and play an im-portant role in providing education about AIDS.

The award for the Mathare Youth Sports Association (Kenya) exemplifies the conviction of the Fund's late Honorary Chairman, Prince Claus, about the importance of sporting achievements in strengthening the social fabric and self-confidence of societies without which human development cannot proceed.

Kids from the Mathare Valley begin life with the odds stacked against them and the road from slum boy to su-perstar is tough to say the least. But those who begin their sporting careers with MYSA have shown that the combined ingredients of competition, discipline, community service, successful role models and a desire to succeed, can produce the best in the business.

This short report deals mainly with MYSA’s sports development work and its emerging resource require-ments. However, it must be recognised that this work also acts as a crucial ‘entry point’ to their much more comprehensive and impressive programme of environmental/community work, peer leadership/coaching, gender equity, two community libraries and provision of food and support for street children at Nairobi juve-nile court. The extensive HIV/AIDs education programme is delivered by peer educators via group discus-sions, lectures and drama/arts/puppetry.

In effect, the broad rationale of MYSA is to ‘produce responsible citizens’ via member involvement in deci-sion-making at all levels, with a strong emphasis on mutual self-help. MYSA compensates for major failures of the local and national states’ welfare provision and, in many ways, could be viewed as a ‘state within a state’.

I found a very high level of professionalism and commitment among all MYSA personnel – the organisation is based on a very coherent and inclusive philosophy, all its full and part-time employees are recruited from MYSA members and there is a widespread sense of the responsibility to act as positive role models …. My overall impression was of highly committed and talented people sustaining high levels of optimism and ambi-tion in the most difficult circumstances.

The young people who run MYSA demonstrate a high degree of professionalism, combining competitive sports, discipline and community service. They successfully act as role models for their peers. By looking up to their older brothers and sisters, the children of Mathare can start off in life with greater hope and confidence even though the road ahead is fraught with difficulty. It is nonetheless a message of hope that we all need to heed and learn from.

The Mathare Youth Sports Association of Kenya runs a variety of neighbourhood projects to help other people help themselves. I am impressed by MYSA's work in helping young people develop new skills, improving their self-confidence, stopping the spread of HIV/AIDS and empowering individuals through recreation.

The success of the first Street Football World Cup is giving the social dimension of the game boost all over the world …. Soon all eyes in the world of football will be on Africa - and the trophy of the 2006 festival is al-ready there: the Copa Andrés Escobar has a place of honour at Mathare Youth Sports Association (MYSA), Af-rica´s largest and oldest street football project.

I'm not saying we can radically change poverty in Africa but we must support projects which are doing won-derful, life-changing work like MYSA. It is so humbling to experience it. I was blown away in the Mathare slum. I would have cried if I walked through there on my own. I've been to a lot of places and to see that was just so shocking.

I have traveled through real areas of poverty before, appalling poverty in the poorest places in India and in China but what I witnessed in Mathare hit me to the core …. You want to blame someone because you look at the children there and feel there is no reason why they should live in such conditions. It is so difficult to smile at seemingly happy children when you see sewage running through people's homes …. Many of these people have no reason to be hopeful but they keep going. People in our countries don't understand. I could literally get joy from helping just one of those kids. Coming to a place like this is addictive. I want to help more. The things I saw have left a deep impression on me.

In Kenya, where the level of poverty is astounding and beyond anything I had ever seen before, the Mathare Youth Sports Association have been successful in intervening in the lives of young people who have no reason at all to be hopeful. Yet they have given them hope that some day they will rise above the incredible odds they've been dealt growing up in one of the worst slums in the world.

Walking into this area of Kenya, I saw poverty, filth, crime and hopelessness. Any person or organisation coming into this area trying to instill hope into young men and women by talking to them about all of the val-ues I mentioned above that I learned from sports would not be given the time of day – and would quite possi-bly be laughed away, if not robbed. But MYSA use sport to gain the attention of these young people. By starting and building the most successful football league in Kenya and operating in the slum that is Mathare, they have gained access to these kids when no one else could.

The kids want to play football in the MYSA league because of the organisation, the equipment and access to fields and facilities that they would not otherwise get. The MYSA organisation's directors and coaches, many of whom grew up in the Mathare slum themselves and have bettered their lives through the MYSA project, un-derstand that their role gives them the opportunity to talk with these kids and instil hope in them and also to lead by example, since they are the best example.

While athletes and celebrities are repeatedly touted as heroes and role models, it is the everyday person - who has pulled themselves out of a difficult or hopeless situation and who shares that story and the lessons they've learned with others to help them to do the same - who are the real heroes and the real role models. That is pre-cisely what I found in the programme directors and coaches of the MYSA project, true role models.

The story of these kids here is so harsh yet they are being offered hope through sport. I have seen where these young kids come from and it is a credit to themselves - and MYSA - that many of them are able to turn their lives around. Going through Mathare was a nightmare. But sport can give them pride and help build self-esteem. This is a clear example of how sport can make a difference to the lives of so many young people. I think it is so appropriate that Mathare should have been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. Sport can achieve things that nothing else can.

BBC: There is a quote in your book on "the most remarkable football club in the world …" And it's not Man-chester United. It's the Mathare football club In Nairobi. What makes you say that? Sir Bobby Charlton: I am a member of the Laureus Sport for Good Foundation which is a worldwide body. What they do is they fund projects which we go into. I first went to Kenya to one of the first projects we had. And there was this young lad in the slums of Nairobi, Peter was his name. I met him and we went and had a look at the slums, one of the second worst and largest slums in Africa. They started organizing their own foot-ball teams in little leagues on any little bit of spare ground. What they did was they gave two points for a win, a point for a draw and a point if you went in to clean up the slums on a Saturday. And everyone came and wanted to play for this team. It was a magical idea. Eventually they won the league, won the championship and represented them in the African Champions League and were nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.