Help us build our own storage and changing room

Hi

My name is Lisa. I'm one of the owners of Generation of Opportunity Association (G.O.A). We operate in the Kibera slums in Nairobi, Kenya.

Our goal is to create a safe environment for girls in the slums. We use football as a tool to teach them about things like: team building, discipline, staying focused on their dreams, doing good in school, and having good values in life.

By working and helping these girls we also help the community. The girls often take responsibility for their siblings, so at the football field you will often find young kids playing around.

We have worked hard to create a safe environment around the field for these kids to be at. Kibera is overflooded by drugs, so we have been communicating with the people higher up in the ranking to keep all that away from the field. So far it has worked.

We are also working with the boys team to create mutual respect between the sex. Since girls and women are at a high risk of being victims of violence and rape because of the downgraded outlook on girls and women in the society.

We try to fight against that and teach the boys to respect our girls. And we have found football to be a good way of doing so.

We also do activities together when we have the financial capacity. Sometimes it's just the girls and sometimes we bring the boys aswell.

We are in need of our own storage and changing room, since the owner of the storage room we had, wants to use it for something else.

A storage/changing room may not seem like a big deal. But for the girls in the slums, it really is. The old one (that we got kicked out from) have been their safe place. The girls in the slums are at high risk of any kind of abuse, and especially sexually harassment. So that's why we want to build our own.