By Keevan Labowitz | Co-Chair, Equip Manyatta
2015 seems to be flying by and those involved with the Manyatta Youth Resource Centre have a demanding schedule. Even as we continue with our many activities and responsibilities, we at the MYRC and Equip Manyatta wish to offer our condolences and mourning for the victims of the horrible attack at Garissa University. This attack on April 2, took away the lives of 147 young Kenyans who could have helped to build a better tomorrow for Kenya. Insecurity in Kenya is increasing and youth who live in poverty or are vulnerable in other ways are seen as potential recruits for terrorist groups and gangs. Though our impact at the MYRC may not reach nationwide, we whole heartedly believe that the programs and opportunities we offer provide youth with alternatives to violence, help them understand they have positive options in life, encourage them to believe they can become successful, and equip them with knowledge they need to make constructive and safe choices. With every youth we keep in school, every youth we engage in physical activities and every youth we offer the chance to express themselves artistically we help a youth know they have more to live for than extremism and gang-life.
Providing youth with the tools they need to be successful individuals and Kenyan citizens is one of our goals at the MYRC. For this reason we collaborated with IMPACT Research to host their Healthy Choices seminar for the boys and girls who participate in our programs. Healthy Choices helps youth learn about ways they can protect themselves in their daily life from sanitary issues to reproduction to drugs and alcohol. This seminar not only gave our youth valuable lessons they will take with them into adulthood, but it also provided a positive environment and activity for them as they were on their break from school. The MYRC also partnered with the Kisumu YWCA to host a workshop about options for improving family health. The MYRC aspires to connect with many organizations to empower our youth members with access to information and skills building.
Our senior football team, which recently began its provincial league campaign, also took time to help organize a clean-up of Shaurimoyo ACK Parish Church grounds. The Shaurimoyo School System has been a valuable partner to the MYRC, and Shaurimoyo Primary is the main training field for Manyatta United FC. As the surrounding estates do not have sufficient infrastructure to deal with the massive amount of rubbish and often-raw sewage, the area our youth live in can be hazardous to health. The MYRC frequently organizes community clean-ups to promote the benefits of a healthy environment to our youth members and our community as well.
We have many things to be thankful about at the MYRC these past months. Very importantly, we were selected to be featured as a Project of the Month for May on Global Giving’s Project of the Month Club. We feel so honored and thankful that Global Giving is recognizing our work and we hope that being a part of the club this month will help us reach more people interested in supporting our project in the future as well. We are also thankful to Mayfair Holdings Limited, which has agreed to donate two crates of bread each month to our weekly feeding program. Once a week, the MYRC organizes lunch for its members so that it can ensure that they get at least one meal that day. We wish we could do more, but the costs of feeding so many youth adds up. We are also happy that the 2015 Kisumu Youth Football Association’s (KYFA) 2015 soccer season has started. We were proud to be a part of KYFA’s ribbon cutting ceremony at Shaurimoyo Primary School. The MYRC will field several under-18 teams with a chance of a cash prize at the end of the season for the top two teams in each category. That is another reason Mayfair’s donation is so important to us. Lastly, the MYRC is proud to have purchased a motorbike to be used for income generation as well as local transportation for our management board. Motorbikes in Kenya are often used as a cheaper alternative to a taxi and the MYRC has already employed an athlete from our senior team as a driver during the week. This motorbike will enable him to start supporting himself financially and will also provide a small stream of income for the MYRC. The motorbike will also help our management board members to get to local meetings and events.
The MYRC performing arts department has also been busy the past few months. Our recording studio, Starbell Records, initiated a collaboration with two other local studios to create a song promoting unity among Kisumu performing artists and their studios. Starbell, together with Street Breeze Records and One Vibe Entertainment, recorded a song featuring artists from each studio and produced a music video. Ultimately the group will also release a short documentary that will chronicle the journey of the collaboration. We hope that we will send a message of unity to local musicians and producers and inspire collaborations like this in the future.
Starbell Records and some Starbell performing artists also collaborated with other performing artists from Kisumu to create a group called 2Jinyce. This group will be performing at local primary and secondary schools with the goal of creating a dialogue about public health combining the message with lots of entertainment from musicians, dancers, aspiring models and theatre groups. Starbell artist Gabiro explains that the group wants to, “engage the pupils and students on this talk and also the teachers, some of whom are parents.” 2Jinyce also aims at inspiring students to follow their dreams and believe in their talent.
The MYRC was also honored to receive a visit from an in-the-field representative from Global Giving. Our visitor, Kelly, ran two workshops at the MYRC office, one with the goal of helping more local groups access Global Giving and its resources and another for already existing Global Giving projects based in Kisumu. It was wonderful to have a representative come and see first hand our projects in action. The workshops were helpful for many local groups who learned more about Global Giving but also gained important information about online fundraising and best practices for new NGOs. We welcome Kelly back anytime and also welcome any visitors who would like to see how we are helping youth in Kisumu.
The MYRC is continually struggling to find adequate financial support for its education program. We support more than 20 boys and girls currently in primary and secondary school. This is why we recently began an education support micro-project on Global Giving. All donations made to the micro-project will help ensure that our current sponsored youth stay in school and that we can expand our support to more vulnerable youth. Our education program supports girls like Sara, whose mother passed away due to HIV/AIDS. Sara lives in a one-room tin home with her elderly father and her younger brother who was infected with HIV at birth. Sara is not infected but still faces a dire future unless she can get the education she deserves. Please visit our micro-project, Education Opportunities for Manyatta, at http://www.globalgiving.org/microprojects/manyatta-education/ and make a donation that will give our Kenyan youth a brighter future. Please also share both of our projects with your friends and family.
Thank you again for all that you have done. We couldn’t have made it this far without you all.
By Keevan Labowitz | Co-Chair, Equip Manyatta
By Keevan Labowitz | Equip Manyatta Co-Chair
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