Advocacy

Imarisha Dada – Girls Empowerment Program

Imarisha Dada, a Kiswahili word meaning “enhance our sisters”, is an empowerment initiative aimed at enhancing the potential of girls through sports and creating an environment where adolescent and teenage girls can gain access to female-driven development activities in life skills building, HIV/Aids, culture, leadership and peer education.

The impacts of these activities are aimed at building upon real issues and daily challenges experienced in the various young girl’s lives in the informal settlements. Self-esteem, leadership skills and increased gender consciousness still remain the major issues affecting young girls in the informal settlements.  Also, through this program, we have been able to draw girls from the various teams in our underage youth league in not just Kariobangi but also neighbouring slums as well to participate in the Football Kenya Federation Nairobi Regional League.

Imarisha dada project also takes part in community service programs where we do community clean-ups, tree planting in the community schools and promoting Simama Africa initiatives through the passing of information to community members.

Cities form the bedrock of modern human progress by being home to the largest and most dynamic economies, incubating talent, creativity and innovation, and having young, mobile and diverse populations. Urban dynamics such as unplanned high population density, high mobility, informal settlements and a high concentration of marginalized, fragile and stigmatized communities also create and exacerbate vulnerability to HIV infection.  Many of the factors that put city residents generally at risk for HIV infection are magnified in the lives of young people.

Many of the factors that put city residents generally at risk for HIV infection are magnified in the lives of young people. In the absence of adequate sexual health knowledge and services, young people’s quests for intimacy and sexual affirmation can entail great health risks, including the risk of acquiring HIV infection. Simama Africa in partnership with German Foundation for World Population (DSW) is working with young people to tackle this.

Young people are often more receptive to prevention messages than older people, and prevention efforts involving young people in slums will strongly influence the HIV epidemic. To this end, we organize our league to end on 1st December of each year when we hold our annual award ceremony and use the platform to create awareness among young people as we observe the World AIDS Day in solidarity with those who are and have been affected by the HIV/AIDS epidemic.

Our goal under this program is to use football to reach young people in marginalized urban slums of Nairobi with the aim of increasing their understanding of HIV and enabling them to live safe and healthy lives.