KENYA: SOCCER / FOOTBALL - Sports stars of the recent past, Marcel Desailly and Michael Johnson, visit a Laureus Sport for Good-supported project in Nairobi

Two great sports stars of the recent past, Marcel Desailly and Michael Johnson, have visited a Laureus Sport for Good-supported project in Kenya to see how children living in deprived areas are being helped to improve their lives. Desailly is a former captain of the French national soccer team and a trustee of the National Laureus Sport for Good Foundation in France; former U.S. athlete Johnson is a Laureus World Sports Academy member and five-time Olympic gold medallist. On Tuesday (October 24) they toured the slums of Mathare, one of the largest and poorest in the Kenyan capital and where HIV/AIDS and other diseases are widespread. On Wednesday they joined the girls and boys who play soccer with the Mathare Youth Sports Association, which uses football as a potential catalyst for social change and has been supported by Laureus since 2000. Some young people involved with the association have gone on to become role models and youth leaders in their community. The association has helped to create a professional football team, Mathare United FC, which is now one of the top four in Kenya. Every player comes from the youth programme and carries out at least 60 hours of community work each month. Participants can also gain non-sporting benefits from their involvement in Mathare; one obtained a Rhodes scholarship and graduated from Oxford University. Desailly and Johnson held a news conference and the former French soccer captain told journalists: "Through sport we can find plenty of good things, you know, that kids are having the possibility to grow, to grow in a good condition, to grow with the idea that through sports they can find discipline, they can find motivation for their own life. We don't expect all the kids to become Michael Johnson or Marcel Desailly, but at least we want them to have hopes and to have motivation for something and from that it's already a victory." Johnson said he had toured the world, but had never seen such bad slums as those in Mathare. He expressed his feelings at the news conference: "On the one hand very, very sad to see people living in these conditions, because I've never seen anything like this and I've been all over the world, I've been to India and China and Ive seen people live in some very bad condition but I've never seen anything like this before and it makes you angry, you want to blame someone, because you look at these young kids and you say there is no reason why they should have to live in these condition, whose fault is it? But more importantly you see that there are people who have come out of there that have been successful."

ITN Source | August 26, 2006

Tags:. .told. .successful. .possibility. .past. .idea