Nicofeli Tigers football team gets new jerseys!

2009-08-19T23:24:00.001-07:00

The Nicofeli Tigers football team is roaring and ready to go with their fierce new jerseys, with customized tiger design and football-league quality logo, services designed and donated by friends in the USA. They received 75 new jerseys on Tuesday, Aug. 18, 2009.

The design was created by Antonio Garcia of www.goodnighttv.com. An adult version of the t-shirt will be sold online, with any proceeds returning to the club in Kibera.

Remaining needs for the team include a medical kit, modest transportation costs to regional matches, and proper footwear for the kids. If you would like to help sponsor the team or even donate for one of these needs, please contact the club directly at: nicofeliyouthclub@yahoo.com

To visit a related photo album which features more photos of the kids in their jerseys, a special lunchtime feeding day that served 100 residents, and kids from the affiliated Hope Library enjoying their growing collection of 3,200 books: link here.

Hope Library Phase II complete, with 2,200 more books!

2009-08-10T23:37:00.000-07:00

Good news! The biggest shipment of donated books so far has arrived at The Hope Library in Kibera. More than 2,200 books arrived safely after a long journey via shipping container from the USA.

The books were gathered in Chicago and forwarded from other locations around the states by Ron Reason and his vast network of friends and sponsors, and were shipped along with a much larger collection of donated goods by the American Friends of Kenya. (Thanks, AFK!) To read a related blog entry about how Facebook helped make all this possible, go here. The books were carefully screened to be of most utility to the people of Kibera, and fall under categories including history, biography, geopolitics, women's studies, African and African-American authors, poetry, health, and lots and lots of classics, fiction and kids books.

Book donations are now on hold as Nicofeli/Hope pursues its dream in Phase III of its development: the procurement of a secure permanent facility, from which to operate the club's many programs that aid the community, and to house the impressive collection of books with proper shelves, lighting, and chairs where residents can relax and read. If you would like to help with this ambitious phase of our development, please contact: nicofeliyouthclub@yahoo.com

To see an inspiring photo album of the kids enjoying their books, go here.

'A library is changing Kibera' - profile in The Standard

2009-02-15T06:52:00.000-08:00

A Sunday Magazine story in The Standard newspaper detailed the launch and early successes of the Nicofeli Youth Club library in Kibera. Link here for that article, and link here for a personal essay from Ron Reason, who assisted with the founding.

We're up and running! Kibera's first library

2009-02-10T14:02:00.000-08:00

With more than 1,000 books on hand, Kibera's first library, affiliated with the Nicofeli Youth and Kids Clubs and housed at St. George Orthodox Church, is officially up and running! You can see photos of the kids enjoying the books, and director Osir Caleb and volunteers working with the kids, logging the books, and getting things rolling. To donate books, sporting goods, or other materials within Nairobi or vicinity, contact Osir Caleb at nicofelikidsclub@gmail.com. To donate money to be used toward shipping quality used books from the states, visit this page for more information and a quick link to PayPal. Thanks for visiting this blog, and for your support!

Nicofeli Youth Club Profile

2008-12-04T17:12:00.000-08:00

BRIEF BACKGROUND OF THE CLUB

Nicofeli Youth Club’s present programmes were shaped by a planning process undertaken in 2008 immediately after the post-poll skirmishes, documented in the plan and budget 2008-2010. Although a two year perspective was taken, objectives were set to a one-year time frame ending July, 2009, and financial requests were likewise limited to one year. Nicofeli Youth Club is a Community Based Organization (CBO), duly registered by the Government of Kenya.

The club started in the year 2007, but became active the year 2008, immediately after post poll skirmishes, and so far has enrolled about 200 youth on board. The club’s motto is “Promoting Youth’s Talents Through Access to Youth’s Right to Extracurricular Activities.” But access to these activities are limited by weakness in the system, e.g. insufficient personnel unevenly distributed, with the poor getting nearly 1%, if any; affordable facilities; complexity of procedures; remoteness of professional personnel and socioeconomic characteristics of the population, e.g. low functional literacy levels, ignorance of rights, and of course poverty itself. Furthermore, the education, cultural, gender and social systems tend to be perceived by the ordinary youth as an instrument of state authority, oppressive, complicated, slow and remote.

AIM: Based on such analysis the club’s main aim is to promote youth’s talent through access to extracurricular activities, through community empowerment. Community empowerment is to be pursued through the following programmes:

1. Reading culture: promotion of youth literacy and reading culture through availing of reading books, achieved through lending of reading materials.
2. Arts: Administering arts classes, both creative and other forms of arts, with the youth.
3. Sports: training the youth on various sporting activities.
4. ICT: establishing an ICT centre where the youth are trained on information and communication technology.
5. Social work: engage the youth in campaigns in environmental cleaning, peace building and health awareness e.g. HIV/AIDS, malaria, etc.
6. Feeding: a weekly feeding day for the youth in which they are trained on nutrition.

GOAL: To maximize the full potential of the youth through promoting their talent as well as participatory engagements that serves their needs and aspirations in building a better community.

SPECIFIC OBJECTIVES

1. To initiate development projects for the youth through income generation, activities and entrepreneurial training.
2. To empower youth to properly manage their health.
3. To increase participation and interaction of youth in community through sports and recreational activities.
4. To uphold gender equity and equality among the youth in all sectors of development.
5. To promote life skills, livelihood skills and social responsibility among youth.
6. To educate the youth on the dangers of drug abuse and crime as away of reducing the rates of drug abuse and crime.
7. To use creative art as art-based medium, i.e. film, theatre, printing or dance, to promote and/or create awareness on issues affecting youth and their role in community development as a means of building intergenerational and inter-ethnic bridges and alliances.
8. To promote active non-violent approaches for civic engagement through building skills for early warning systems, alternative means to resolution, mediation advocacy and lobbying towards community empowerment.
9. To promote leadership skills development through practical skill building interaction with community based and national leaders, mentoring programs, inter-ethnic and cross-cultural process.
10. To promote and harness Kenyans cultural and ethnic diversity through training/education for a community level dialogue (between youth peers and intergenerational); cultural exhibitions as a means of promoting inter-ethnic dialogue, respect for diversity, tolerance and acceptance.
11. To clearly and specifically demonstrate working partnership with other nonprofit organizations, government and/or donor agencies part and /or present.

CURRENT ACTIVITIES/ ACHIEVEMENTS

The clubs current activities include:

1. Library: stocked with books for both the young and adult literacy. Books on fictions, stories, religious, arts, true stories, self-help, environmental issues, commercial management, kindergarten literature, etc. A shipment of nearly 1,000 books is expected to St. George Orthodox Church by end of 2008.
2. Arts: arts classes for the children are administered in partnership with the M2 arts collective.
3. Sports: Sports training for both the young and older youth are on. The club has so far received remarkable support from the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports (MOYAS) towards this, of which the club has signed partnership agreement with. Sporting activities include football, karate, basketball, table tennis, volleyball, and all manner of health body building activities.
4. Social work: The club is authorized and licensed by City Council of Nairobi (CCN) to collect garbage within Sarang’ombe ward. Langata constituency; has in partnership with MOYAS planted trees in three institutions, namely Olympic Primary School, Kenya Assembly of God-Olympic, and St. George Orthodox Church-Kianda; held workshops and campaigns on peace building and HIV/AIDS with support from St. George Orthodox church and Nation Media Group; held workshops on environmental matters, in partnership with MOYAS and CCN; these social activities are actively going on.
5. Feeding: there is a weekly feeding schedule every Saturday in which the youth on board the club are fed and their guardians conducted on nutrition tips.

CHALLENGES

The club’s challenges are:

1. Funds: This is the club’s main challenge. As can be noted, the programmes that the club had set to develop are not operating as per the target, and some have not taken off due to financial constraints.
2. Outreach: Reaching out to the youth and influencing them to get on board the club has also been an observable challenge, especially due to socioeconomic characteristics of the community population.
3. Security: The club is established within a community with a very fragile security system, with the youth taking the lead in engaging in criminal acts, hence at times making operation unsafe.
4. Lack of space: The community around, being the largest slum in the country, is highly congested that there is not enough space to implement the club’s programme, especially outdoor sports.
5. Ethnicity: The community around has a diverse ethnic background with a deep rooted ethnic hatred, special among the older folk. This makes even a challenge for the club to influence parents thinking toward becoming members of the club or their kids getting on board, especially if they feel it does not belong to the group. (Refer to our mission.)
6. Negative attitude: General negative attitude toward development projects especially due to the current situation where people are overburdened by the excessive high cost of living, making survival nearly impossible. So people tend to have a general negative attitude toward this kind of project as they feel it is not a basic necessity, etc.

COLLABORATORS

The club’s current collaborators/affiliates are:

1. “Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports” (MOYAS)
2. “City Council of Nairobi” (CCN)
3. “Church and Religious organizations” various
4. “Art Within reason” contemporary art gallery, Chicago, Illinois, USA.
5. “M2 Arts crew”
6. Sought collaboration/affiliates with “World Vision”.
7. Sought collaboration with “Kenya Community Development Foundation” (KCDF).
8. Sought collaboration/affiliate with “Green Belt Movement” and is willing to collaborate with other similar organization.

LOCATION
The club is located at St. George Orthodox Church - Kibera Parish, along Kibera Drive off Ngong Road and having its postal address at General Post Office (G.P.O) Postal Box 17212-code: 00100, Kenyatta Avenue, City centre-Nairobi-Kenya.

VISION
The club’s vision is to establish a youth empowerment/resource centre within its area of operation to address the diverse needs of the youth that have for a long time been neglected by development activities provided by various organizations/government.

MISSION
To implement a proper structure staffed with qualified team of personnel, and if need be, working around the clock to ensure that the club’s programmes/ activities are accessible, acceptable, contextually appropriate, affordable and available in terms of club’s objectives and service provision enhanced, effective and congruent with the national guidelines for the provision of youth friendly service. To address most of the challenges affecting the youth while providing a forum for them to interact and discuss these challenge as peers. To achieve club’s objectives through integration of services that will include a diversity of activities ranging from entrepreneurship training, information provision, counseling, games, community mobilization and sensitization and networking as well as act as spring-board for reaching the wider communities in implementing youth-friendly projects.

Fundraising underway to ship books

2008-11-05T19:33:00.000-08:00

A holiday fundraising drive is underway via the art gallery within(Reason): a contemporary art and photo space, in Chicago, to raise monies to help ship books to the Nicofeli church library in Kibera. For more information on how you can help, visit this page. [Above: Volunteer Jessica Gilbert helps package books in preparation for shipping from Chicago.]

Welcome! About the clubs

2008-08-05T11:18:00.001-07:00

The Nicofeli Kids Club and Youth Club are up and running! Founded and directed by Osir Caleb, the clubs are a venue for kids of the Kibera slum of Nairobi, Kenya, to have access to after-school arts, reading and sports programs. If you would like to learn more about helping, please email nicofelikidsclub@gmail.com and we will get back to you right away!