Western Kenya Sports Association (WEKESA)
Harnessing young, sporting talent in western Kenya by providing opportunities for underprivileged and homeless young persons to develop their potential through structured sports training programs, with a special emphasis on football. Using sport as a way for young persons, with particular psychological and social needs, to heal, develop and flourish in lif
e after early setbacks. Western Kenya Sports Association (WEKESA) has establish a structured and well-organised sports programme to identify sports talent football children in Western Kenya and develop such talent into high performance sports persons which will contribute to general development within the target area. The initiative is structured within WEKESA’s Development of sport for sports. The other objective advanced by WEKESA’s concept is Development of communities through sport. The development community has typically marginalized sport, viewing it as a relatively low priority among a host of needs and goals
Project aims
• Establishing a structured and well-organised sports programme to identify sports talent in and around Western Kenya area and develop such talent into high performance sports persons and grow;
• Providing an additional avenue of healing and self-development for talented young persons with special psycho-social needs;
• Providing an additional skills development avenue for young people based in Kenya;
• Establishing a platform for sports tourism in Kenya;
• Providing sport and tourism related employment opportunities for young persons in and Kenya;
The project plans to hold tournaments and Subsequent tournaments are scheduled to take twice each year. The events will also be used as talent search events where accredited FIFA coaches will be invited to select skilled players. Football scouts from in and around the world will be invited to attend these sessions. It is expected that this move will make it possible for the project to showcase talents of these young players in an effort to give them opportunity for selection. It’s with no doubt that there exists plenty of talent in this nation evident in the ongoing corporate sponsored youth championships. Copa coca cola and Safaricom’s Sakata have portrayed the weak side of our structures and we must commend them for a great job of filling an existing youth development talents. However, these championships are not permanent; they are seasonal and have different reasons for their existence. We therefore need permanent structures that will play as constant feeds to our national teams. The Kenyan football scene does not have a clear strategy of identifying talent. The process therefore of selecting players to the national team as well as football clubs is left to chance. Recently the government with support from UNICEF set up a talent search programme that is set o run throughout the year. The government through the Football Kenya Federation also directed that all clubs establish football academies that will go a long way in helping tap talent among its young population at an early age. However there exists glaring in the entire that need to be addressed if this project will register result. It is also clear that structured talent search programmes have the capacity to bear fruit, a case in point is the Mathare Youth Sports association, Karura Youth sports Association (KYSA) and Kisumu youth sports association (KYFA) to name but a few.
