FOR A GOOD CAUSE:Uniform goals help Kenyan children

Cameron Allen of Newport Beach can’t go anywhere without talking about soccer, but it’s not simply because she’s an enthusiastic AYSO mom.

In addition to the occasional bragging about her 8-year-old daughter Kimberlee’s achievements in the sport, Allen is telling everyone she knows about youth soccer teams thousands of miles away in Mathare Valley, a slum in Nairobi, Kenya.

She is collecting used soccer uniforms and equipment for the Mathare Assn., a recreational, educational and life skill-building resource center for the thousands of children who live there.

“When I really think about the circumstances that they live in, it makes me realize how much we have in our lives,” she said. “I feel guilty that our kids wear a uniform 10 times and it’s done with, and these kids don’t even have uniforms.”

It was Allen’s mother, Gigi Lyons, who turned her on to the project after visiting Mathare in January with friends who are members of the Rotary Club of Edina, Minn.

“You can’t possibly imagine what it’s like until you see it,” Lyons said. “There is not water, no electricity, no sanitation. It’s not hard to be moved to help these children.”

In Mathare, she met the organization’s chairman, David Waithaka, who told her that for many young boys and girls, recreational activities like soccer are a way to help avert extreme poverty, HIV infection and teenage pregnancy.

“We found that sports play a crucial role in the social, physical and intellectual development of these kids, and soccer is the cheapest and most popular sport in Kenya, and that became our tool,” Waithaka wrote from Kenya in an e-mail. “[It] gives the youth a positive outlook on life and diverts their attention away from the social ills and vices.”

Waithaka understands the benefits of such a program better than most. He and five siblings were raised in Mathare, and he returned to Kenya to work with the organization after completing college and earning a master’s degree in the United States.

Though Allen’s daughter Kimberlee cannot quite fathom the poverty in Mathare, she can understand the joys of playing soccer as she prepares to enter her seventh season. She is helping with the project “because everybody could be equal” and “it just feels good.”

With more than 100 uniforms awaiting shipment to Nairobi, the pair continues to collect jerseys (preferably those with sleeves), shorts, socks, shoes, shin guards, balls, bibs, gloves, cones, nets and any other equipment that may be useful.

“I’ve done a lot of fundraising and philanthropy, but this is the first thing I am doing that has affected me so profoundly,” Allen said. “It means so much to others and requires so little.”

“In fact, people have been thanking me for the chance to clean out their closets.”

HOW TO HELP

To make arrangements for dropping off used soccer uniforms and equipment, please contact Cameron Allen at rckallen@msn.com or (949) 760-1447. Tax-deductible cash donations may be mailed to The Mathare Soccer Project, 1424 High Bluff Drive, Newport Beach, 92660. Checks can be made payable to the Edina Rotary Foundation, with Mathare Soccer Project noted in the memo line.