True Colors Football Club in Kenya - Footballers for Peace!

Janai Orina, a Kenyan friend in DC, sent me the link to this moving video on YouTube of young footballers in Kenya. The football club is sponsored by Ecosandals, a wonderful little NGO working in Nairobi, Kenya. Here is an appeal to contribute to the project from the Ecosandals website:

Please Donate to Ecosandals Kicks for Peace football.

Ecosandals is the lead sponsor of a first-ever football tournament and reconciliation event, “Kicks for Peace, sponsored by Ecosandals”. “As Kenya has denigrated into ethnic killings,” Ecosandals Project Director Becky Wachera commented, “we as human beings must all work together to stop the violence and begin the healing.” In connection with over 100 community-based and non-governmental organizations, led by Reality Tested Youth Programme (RYP), Kicks For Peace will provide a forum for youth based in some of Nairobi’s hardest hit communities of Mathare, Kibera, Korogocho, Huruma, Dagoretti, Kariobangi, Kwangware and Dandora to address continuing violence through dialogue, art and sport

 

The opening match of the football tournament, which will include both a girls and boys tournament, will take place Saturday, February 9. It will be preceded by an opening ceremony organized by a diverse cross-section of Kenyans, each with their own message of ethnic celebration and unity. The ceremony will begin at 1 pm. at Huruma Football Grounds, Nairobi, and, like all the matches in the tournament, will be free of charge and open to the public. Discussion forums will take place at numerous locations each day of the tournament. Each of the over 100 teams in the tournament will include players from a diverse range of ethnic communities. Please click here to make your contribution for "Kicks for Peace".

I am particularly pleased to see this wonderful initiative happening, not just because it is such a positive story of peace in Kenya, but also because I have known about Ecosandals for many years from the time when Ecosandals and Kabissa both won the ICT Stories Competition in 2002. Our winning stories are still available online:

• Sole Comfort Dot-Com: Bridging the Global Income Gap Through Hard Work, Quality Sandals, and ICTs
  Comments of the jury:
  

  -	The perseverance and determination of the two founders, and what they then went on to build is fascinating and is testimony to how much the youth can contribute.

• Kabissa - Space for change in Africa
  Comments of the jury:
  

  -	What I liked in Kabissa is the extraordinary collaboration the project got all over Africa. It should be a real lesson for most organizations working in this continent, most of them working in a fragmented way, spoiling resources instead of joining efforts to get better results!

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