Fútbol Más (http://futbolmas.org/en/kenya/) a well-established youth program based in Mathare and Kibera, uses football as a medium for learning and developing resilience and life skills for young people between the ages of 6 and 20. Last May we visited one of their locations in Mathare and saw first hand the impact the program is having on the kids and the level of support and respect they have in the community. Their team, in turn, visited our workshop to learn more about plastic recycling.
Fútbol Más expects communities to run their sports programs autonomously through income generating activities after a period of 3-5 years. In the pursuit of program autonomy, they were exploring the idea of starting a branch of Plastiki Rafiki in Mathare. Being one of Nairobi’s most polluted areas, with no formal waste collection facility, plastic collection and recycling makes excellent sense. We discussed the logistics of setting up a workshop then and, three months later when we met again, we were amazed to learn that they had already mobilised the community, created a business plan, established a location for the workshop and started collecting and sorting plastic….all that was remaining was for us to help with the machines and conduct the relevant training.
Thanks to the PTO community picnic and other generous donations, we were able to raise the funds required to build a plastic shredder and plastic injection machine for the Futbol Mas Mathare Workshop. In so doing, the Mathare community will be able to start cleaning up their environment by recycling plastic waste and, through the sale of recycled plastic products, financially supporting the Fútbol Más program.
We are enormously grateful to everyone who came out to support us, and this latest Plastiki Rafiki initiative, at the PTO Community Picnic. Watch this space for more news about this exciting partnership!
