Fútbol Más Kenya continues to strengthen communities through sports-based psychosocial support, working closely with children, youth leaders, caregivers, and key community stakeholders, including our partner schools. As we reach the midpoint of 2025, we are excited to share updates on our current projects, recent impact, and plans for the rest of the year.

Current status and Active Projects

Fútbol Más Kenya remains steadfast in its mission to create safe spaces and build resilience among children and adolescents through sports and life skills. As of May 2025, we are actively engaging 552 girls and boys in Matin Mathare and Kibera, up from 478 in 2024, through our weekly structured sessions. Our Youth Leadership Journey has also grown, with 68 youth leaders by participating, compared to 61 last year. However, the participation of caregivers has decreased slightly, with 31 caregivers involved this year, compared to 39 in 2024.

In the Refugee camp of Kakuma, we continue to develop sessions both in children's centres as girls and children from neighboring communities. Participation remains with around 80 girls and boys attending a weekly basis.

Our core areas of work include:

·  School Program: Weekly sessions conducted in community spaces through partnerships with local schools in Mathare and Kibera. These sessions focus on the psychosocial well-being, resilience, and social skills for life.

·  Children's Centres: Currently implemented in Kakuma, addressed to both girls and boys who attend centers, as well as those living in the community.

·  Route of Youth Leadership and Community Coordination: These programs empower young people and caregivers through mentoring and training modules on child protection, job readiness, entrepreneurship, sexual health, relationships and more.

·  Program Strategy Genre: Initiative focused on promoting the game safe for the girls and addressing gender norms harmful by methods playful intentional and inclusive.

Geographical Scope

We are currently conducting active sessions at the following locations: Mathare and Kibera in the county of Nairobi, and the Refugee camp of Kakuma in the county of Turkana.

Achievements and Impact

The first half of 2025 has brought significant advances and valuable learning experiences. Some milestones highlights include:

1. Successful implementation of sessions in various schools of Mathare and Kibera.
2. Launch of a pilot of accompanying mental health in partnership with Little Lions South Africaapplied in two schools and two age categories.
3. Capacity building workshops for youth leaders and caregivers, in order to improve our methodology and to increase the local leadership in initiatives for safe play.
4. Realization of two leagues community in Mathare and Kibera to celebrate boys and girls, and to promote social cohesion through sport.
5. Special visit of the co-founder of Fútbol Más Víctor Gutiérrez, and representatives of Global Goodfound Fellowswho knew our work in informal settlements.
6. On-going workshops of plastic recycling, as part of our commitment to sustainability and community involvement.

Challenges and Perspectives

Despite our achievements, we continue to face major challenges:

1. Limited resources, which affects our ability to scale and provide materials.
2. Growing mental health care needs that exceed our current capacity of intervention.

For the rest of 2025, we aim to:

1. Expand Our Youth Leadership Journey.
2. Graduate more youth leaders and children of our programs.
3. Make leagues in the next two school periods of 2025.
4. To improve our monitoring and evaluation systems to monitor psychosocial outcomes.

Strengthen partnerships with schools and local organizations to ensure greater community integration and long-term sustainability.

In Fútbol Más Kenyawe are deeply grateful to our partners, collaborators and members of the community. Together, we are building a world where every girl and boy has the opportunity to grow, prosper and shine, through the transformative power of the game.