Improving lives of 1000 girls in Nairobi's slums

A day mixed with football, fun, mentorship and girl talk is what described VAP’s international women’s day that was globally celebrated on 8th March 2015.Right from the echelons of VAP: women staff, coaches and volunteers joined the bandwagon of other women from all the corners of the world to celebrate this extra ordinary day by gathering at Jericho community field with their football gears ready to play football matches with Mrembo Girls program participants. The teams were divided into groups, mixed with staff, coaches, participants and volunteers and lasted for two and a half hours. The tail hour of the games was spent on girl talks and mentorship where both participants had to open up and talk about experiences of issues they have gone through as a ‘girl’ child. In small groups, coaches took the lead by making an introduction and narrating the challenges they had gone through and how they had to overcome them. These introductions opened a Pandora’s box as partipants one by one started to get unglued, opening up and sharing their ordeal with the rest of the team including coaches and staff. Based on their vast experience of handling girls issues, and some of them by the virtue of after ‘been there and done that’,VAP coaches and staff offered supportive talk and advice to the participants including making informed choices and referrals to cases that were critical.

Coach of The Month

After having a short stint working with the community in a different capacity outside VAP, the two years experience that Carol has so far had with VAP since joining as a coach has been a springboard of advancing and cementing her talent and dreams of serving her fellow youth mates. Carol has been so phenomenon and passionate in executing her responsibilities both as a football coach of Mrembo FC and a life skills coach in various schools and community centres. The latest spanner thrown into her work was the digital story telling workshop that she attended in Netherlands a couple of months ago courtesy of Women Win which she has excellently built on it by training a couple of program girls on how to tell and write their personal stories. Despite teaching football and life skills to program participants, the ripple effects of digital story telling continues with other program participants who are learning from Carol on how to package and write their own personal stories

Following up on the DST young leaders training that they received in Netherlands courtesy of Women Win, three young leaders from VAP: Ann, Carol and Liz conducted a 5 day digital story telling workshop with 16 high school adolescent girls from Golden Bridge high school. The girls were taken through a media making process that involved communicating a story in first person using digital media such as recorded voice, video, audio, still images and music. In addition they were also equipped with technical skills, knowledge and opportunity to write, produce and share their personal stories of transformation through sport as well as producing their own videos on challenges they faced, how they overcame them and the impact sport has had in their lives.
DST is a unique tool for outreach, healing and recovery. As a process, the act of telling one’s story can have a profoundly empowering impact on the storyteller. Participants actively construct and reconstruct themselves and their stories through the process of narration. Sharing one’s story, it enables healing, building community, and inspiring social change.

Who's This Girl?

Ten years ago Ayoti was 12 years old and just had a first stint as both Skillz and Mrembo participant at Morrison primary school as well as playing football for Mrembo fc.Over the years she has been a great and interactive program participant and showed a high degree of charismatic leadership rooted from her days when she used to be the team captain for Mrembo FC.From her different spheres of life ,strings of achievements and accolades including sports have been on her feet even during her high school time. After her high school graduation in November 2014, she decided to keep up the spirit by joining VAP as a coach and give back to the community what VAP initially installed in her at her tender age.Ayoti is now actively involved as a certified Skillz and Mrembo coach and very busy doing what she likes most,’Changing lives’