Creativity StARTS Here

Open Dialogue is one of the many projects that have being implemented by the Mathare Foundation. This project led to the creation of another  project dubbed Beyond Football Mathare Champions League. The league started in November. We have completed the girls league (both legs). We had almost finish the 1st leg of the boys league then COVID started distablizing us. This led to the suspension of the league indefinitely.

Mathare Foundation had internal meetings before commencing food distribution exercise. The food stuffs were donated by our new partner KAPU Africa. The food stuffs that we received, has a monetary value of more than 1.5 million Kenya shillings. In the meeting we agreed that we will mostly allow family representative, football coaches and members of the community to come to collect the food stuff in the office. We also deployed delivery of the food to some of the residents of Mathare. We were issued with a go ahead via an email by the government of Kenya through the Secretariat of the Kenya COVID 19 Fund  and the Deputy County Commissioner, Mathare Sub County.

The people who received the food stuffs included mostly people who we have worked with such as children, families, community organizations, football teams, our trainers among others. We ensured that at least that at least a family unit gets 1 packet of Soya Afric Porridge and 2 packets of Tendermercies. Some families got more than this since we have been working with them for many years and they were also in dire need.

We have been able to reach out to more  than 1,500 families in Mathare slums and its environs. The refugees, muslims and children from other nationality such as Ethiopia and Somali have were also supported by us. We have 28 teams (10 boys and 18 girls). 4 of them belong to the refugee community. This refugees who were supported were 45 families which translates to about 225 people. We will be reaching out to more than 75 people soon.

This was a good way of marketing both Mathare Foundation and KAPU Afric since some of the parents wanted to enroll their children into the program. We also received feedback that the Soya Afric Porridge which is also fortified is very sweet, thick and it contains healthy nutrients. Tendermercies is a very healthy and strong meal that keeps you going all day long according to some of the people who we gave the food.

Positive outcomes

Members of the community were very happy and this evident through the messages that they sent to us via WhatsApp or normal text and even phone call. We feel we have reached out to the people who were in need. We are truly inspired by such messages and this shows that a good cause will also be successful and receive some important support.

We were able to address SDG 2 of Zero Hunger by providing food to the less-advantaged groups of people during this period-where access to food and other essential resources is a challenge. At this time Many families are facing hunger threats and through our interventions and other food drive interventions in the Mathare slums. We have been able to save thousands  of lifes.

Encountered difficulties / negative outcomes

During the food distribution exercise, at times we saw people who were not supposed to benefit coming to the office for food stuffs. We explained to them that we already had a list of families/people who were supposed to benefit. Children started flocking into the office. We had to treat them differently because children are very harmless and honest. Hence we shared with majority of the children that came without invitation whatever little that we could offer.

The community members who don’t get food stuffs from us will have a negative mind-set towards us.  It is our role to make them understand that one we do not have any bad blood or ill intention with them. In fact, we have also opened our donors for discussions and we normally provide feedback.

While we depend on fundraising to run the organisation, we hardly get any support on overhead costs. We have managed and nearly gotten by but this proved a challenge when we had rent arears

We are working to ensure that we also secure some funding or % to our overhead cost I.e rent and other operational costs from our donors and well wishers.

 Conclusion

In Fundraising, if are not transparent and accountable. This might lead to some of the people who have donated to have question marks in terms of our credibility. We intend to reach out to every donor and give feedback on how we utilized resources, food and funds sent to us. We are streamlining our operation and for sure there have been a lot of changes in our way of doing things.

NB

We will merge our online campaign into one so that we can concentrate fully. It is tiresome to have different campaigns.

Mathare Foundation is also looking for an online Fundaiser. Kindly email us at info@matharefoundation.org or nehemiaheric@gmail.com

Links:

• Mathare Foundation Website
• Mathare Foundation Facebook page

Open Dialogue project is happy to announce that we managed to do the open forum with people from different faith that is Muslim and Christians. It was a very informative and engaging session where the facilitator got an opportunity to share their experiences, their challenges and how they have been able to cope with steretypes that comes with religion and class. It was great opportunity to bring together the two communities who have been at longerheads with one another since time immemorial.

As we were able to look into the issues pertaining the occurence of the post election violence of 2007/2008 in Kenya. We had stories of survivors who were able to share why they think they were attacked. Most of the respondents stated that issues related to tribe and religion contributed a lot to the war. The survivors were very open and ready to forgive one another because they images of the post elections violences were very melancholic.

It is imperative to state that the fora depicted that people from Mathare and Eastleigh have a lot in common to share in terms of their culture, talent, respect for one another and the team spirit. This are some of the things that the participants were talking about so as to kill the stereotype that exists among the christians and the muslims who live in those areas. It is common to hear that people from the slums are refered to as poor while those from Eastleigh because of the muslim community that lives in Eastleigh are reffered to as terrorist.

As as way of ensuring that people live together as brothers and sisters through the facilitators the participants were taught what it means when you treat one another with lots of respect and show some tolerance. It was agreed that the partcipants present should not view one another based on their tribe or religion but with the content of their chahracter. Another action point was that people should at all times ensure that for every action that they take they must consider the amount of reaction that their actions might cost. A united community never gets defeated and we all have to ensure that our diversity is our strength and it enables us to be what we want to be without limitations.

Whether muslim, christian, rich, poor, black or white we all belong to the human race. We are connected in one way or the other. We have to show respect and be honest with ourselves and others. The future can only be bright when we realize that we are all bound to make mistakes and we can bounce back and rectify our selves.