A letter from the Founder. How much do you love your country?

How much do you love your country? I was born in Kenya and I love my country as much as I love myself, it is part of my life. I have heard many of my colleagues complaining and wishing to live in other countries other than Kenya, little do they know what our beloved country has got to offer because of their limited movement around the country and abroad due to especially economical situations or limited opportunities.

In foreign countries, there are quite some developments which can’t be compared with our country but on the contrary, there are unique things that you can only find here in Kenya that makes me a proud Kenyan. I’m really looking forward to the Olympics and I wish team Kenya will do us good as usual. My biggest wish would be that we have the Olympics mood with us forever more because during such global events we usually come together as one Nation and we forget our tribes, the politics and other negative affiliations that surround us. We should embrace our cultures because that is also what make us proud Kenyans, thus we should shun negative ethnicity by all means.

Sometimes I don’t want to watch the news because it is predominated with bad news and politics. All in all, I thank the government for establishing the National Cohesion and Integration Commission (NCIC) www.cohesion.or.ke/ which has seen a reduction of all manner of polarization on tribal lines; NCIC never give up!

On the other hand, it is astonishing how we have promoted our local tourism that we can’t even enjoy the flora and fauna of our country. The problem is that we are unfortunate that we were born on the crack side of the country like the slums and other deplorable situations, but this is not what Kenya is made of, apart from the beautiful natural sceneries there are other precious values of life like hospitality, happiness, peace, love and unity that are rare to find in other countries and Kenya is one of the destinations you can’t miss these values.

It is high time we open our eyes and vote wisely and refuse to be used to dive into tribal cocoons. Rather, we should open our eyes wider and see the bigger picture called Kenya and engrave the true spirit of peace, love and unity in our hearts and make Kenya one of the greatest havens in the world. I have come to appreciate the true value of education and if you are educated and informed, no one would influence you to act before thinking. Let us educate our sons and daughter because Kenya belongs to them and we need to make sure we pass on the baton in a peaceful and prosperous county.
Here is a question to you, what have you done for Kenya to make sure we either live in harmony with each other? A sober advice: You don’t need to be a politician to influence positive change in our country, it all starts with the small things we do, say, think and even share.

As the founder of Wilsen Initiative it is my sincere hope that one day we shall roll out our sport tourism project starting with football to make even bigger contributions in uniting all Kenyans using sports as a vehicle to our destination. The main aim of this project is to create linkages, tour our country, and learn other cultures and the end result being peaceful cohesion of people and appreciation for our country whereby everyone feels fully responsible in developing the Kenya that we want.

“A country never prospers when the good people remain in silence and do nothing in making sure they shape the paths for a prosperous nation”. Wilson Masaka

“The love for a mum, is like the love for a country”

Picture by Wilson Masaka ( Wilsen Initiative Founder), on the picture Tecy Kimberly and her Mum. High resolution picture available for billboard campaign…

One LOVE

By Wilson Masaka: “Love & Passion for what we do shall make us prosper”

Lastly a big thank you to everyone who purchased our tribe42 t-shirts which is one year old since we launched it, for those that haven’t gotten a copy and would love to purchase , kindly get in touch with Wilson.masaka@gmail.com

Meet the Dream Team

Last weekend (14.07.2012) the Wilsen Initiative team met to channel away forward after our founder came from a two months fellowship at D&F academy in Hamburg – Germany. Therefore we hereby would like to introduce the team  of Wilsen Initiative which compromise of talented, dedicated and passionate youth who wants to make positive change in the community by urging their fellow youth to be at the steering to drive their future to the right direction.

We believe in a change that starts with you and everyone as something unique that they can do, you can look at it from the context of creation or life in general. Our slogan is the champion in you… which is based on self belief, encouragement, proactive and using our skills and talents to reach the stars.

Even though we have close to 30 youths participating in our small ventures like in football  we have a dedicated team which is committed to offer their time and resources to turn all dreams into reality.  In each organisation there ought to be some kind of leadership or management to make things run even without resources, so kindly meet the Wilsen Initiative Team  (Dream Team) which is working together towards a strong Wilsen Initiative;

Wilson Masaka

Name: Wilson Masaka.

Occupation: IT Trainer/ Football coach / Web developer.
Interests: Youth development, ICT, Creativity and Sports.
Role at Wilsen Initiative: Founder / Chair Person.

Why start Wilsen Initiative? “I want to share my experiences, knowledge and skills whereby motivating youth to be positive change makers within their families and society at larger”.

Message to the youth: “Always believe in yourself and choose thepositive role models / mentors who will help you realize your dreams. Don’t shy from challenges they make us stronger”.

Faith Nyaboki

Name: Faith Nyamboki

Occupation: Student/ Designer.
Interests: Working with the youth, Mentoring, ICT, Languages, photography.
Role at Wilsen Initiative: Vice – Chairperson / Editor.

Why start Wilsen Initiative?  “It’s exciting to be part of something special – working with a young dynamic team which has the same interests as me and ultimately learning while giving back to the society.”

Message to the youth: “It’s all about you…you have all it takes to make a difference in the society, so make it happen!”.

Name: Edwin Kipkoech.

Occupation: Accountant.
Interest: Learning new things.
Role at Wilsen Initiative: Treasurer.

Why join Wilsen Initiative? “From the missions and objectives I would love to be part of group which will bring light to those who are in darkness. The group its still on pilot stage it will be great to add my effort to uplift the group to be among the elite ones”.

Message to the youth: “Be yourself in whatever you do, don’t try to impress the world at your own expense.  Learn to have patience with things you do sometimes things don’t appear the way you want them to be”.

Kennedy Onyango

Name: Kennedy Onyango Mbuya.

Occupation: Web designer / Football player.
Interests: Leaning new things..
Role at Wilsen Initiative: Youth affairs in Sports.

Why join Wilsen Initiative? ” I want to share my knowledge of Web design and reproductive health with the youth, and learn new things from wilsen Initiative team”.

Message to the youth: “Let us all work towards achieving our dream, through hard work and determination we can do it”.

Thomas Abungu

Name: Thomas Abungu Okech.

Occupation: Office systems.
Interests: traveling, adventure, watching movies, reading and above all making friends.
Role at Wilsen Initiative: Project Coordination & Management.

Why join Wilsen Initiative? ” To help fulfill my dream of seeing the growth of youth spiritually, knowledge-wise, economically for a better community”.

Message to the youth: “When the going gets tough, the tough gets going”.

Andrew Mutua

Name: Andrew Mutua.

Occupation: Student / Designer /Technologist and Strategist in the making.
Interests: Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).Role at Wilsen Initiative:  Information Communication Technology Advisor

Why join Wilsen Initiative? “Drive the passion for social and community development through creative collaboration in the Wilsen team. More so explore more knowledge, strategy and leadership levels.”

Message to the youth: “I can accept failure, everyone fails at something. But I can’t accept not trying. ~ Michael Jordan”.

Hellen Muturi

Name: Hellen Muturi.

Occupation: Project officer/IT support.
Interests: Participating in youth group activities, computer networking and community development.
Role at Wilsen Initiative: Assistant Project Coordination & Management..

Why join Wilsen Initiative? ” Wilsen Initiative gives hope to talented and energetic youth who would like to explore avenues in life that connects with their interest through its well outlined vision and mission. Great talents will be exposed and they will be able to see the champion in them. I get the chance to realize my long time dream of helping my fellow youth through this initiative.”

Message to the youth: “The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams!”.

Samuel Kimindiri

Name: Samuel Kimindiri Muraya

Occupation: Trainer at Nairobits.
Interests: Working with youth, sharing challenges and progress while learning new ideas.
Role at Wilsen Initiative: Secretary and Sports coordination.

Why join Wilsen Initiative? “I have a heart of sharing my life experiences with youth in the community to inspire them to be positive change makers in our society. Wilsen Initiative has created that platform to express ourselves and connect with our peers in sports and community development”.

Message to the youth: “Change is necessary when we want to pursue a new direction in life. Change gives us hope for the future. Embracing change is not easy, it takes a new outlook on life, determination and perseverance. The change we expect may not happen immediately because real progress is slow. In time, if we change our mindset and actions we will make a significant difference in people’s lives.”

Evaline Akida

Name: Evaline Akida

Occupation: Entrepreneur / Footballer
Interests: Working with youth especially empowering the girl child, football coaching and business management.
Role at Wilsen Initiative:  Sports coordination girl’s team.

Why join Wilsen Initiative? “I  joined Wilsen Initiative because it’s a noble idea that isn’t biased and is also geared towards empowering everyone in the society. I would love to inspire other girls to follow their dreams and to be proactive in shaping their lives. At Wilsen Initiative I have the space to explore my talent and dreams”.

Message to the youth: ” I would urge all the youth especial the girl child to stand up and let our voices be heard in the society, we to can do it only if we dedicate ourselves in positive ventures and be patient to achieve whatever we want in life. Lastly we need to find what we are good at and use it to connect to other opportunities which are quite plenty only if you keep good friends around you”.

“Individual commitment to a group effort – that is what makes a team work, a company work, a society work, a civilization work”. ~Vince Lombardi

We urge you to support our initiative so that we can connect to as many youths as possible in living a positive and prosperous life using their skills and talents in regards to uplifting their communities.  For contributions kindly visit our donation page at http://www.betterplace.org/en/organisations/wilsen-initiative/projects

Thanks

Wilsen Initiative – Sport Tourism

Wilsen Initiative in registered under the society Act of the republic of Kenya with our main objectives;

A) Creating channels of opportunities for youth from disadvantaged backgrounds through matching skills and talents with the markets need especially starting with football.
B) Networking with other youth-led groups to foster peace and other social activities.
C) Sharing life experiences and career guidance through workshops and open forums.
D) Motivating and inspiring youth in the society by being good role models.
E) Facilitate skills transfer from one generation to the next.

Mathare North Rangers FC (MNR) is a product of Wilsen Initiative which nurture’s youth talents in football. It is a community club with the following goals;

• We connect the youth with their community and beyond, whereby forging lasting friendships using football.
• We envisage traversing our country by playing friendly matches and tournaments that will foster understanding of cultural diversity of people in Kenya and beyond.
• We use sports tourism to help the youth explore more about their country and communities while learning about why they should embrace diversity in cultures, tribes and trends around. By doing so we shall be contributing to the National fabric of peaceful cohesion of people either directly or indirectly.
• We also envisage to play in the top league of the Kenya Premier League (KPL) but at the moment it’s not the prime goal why the club was established, rather we would like to connect the youths with opportunities in football around and beyond, basically exposing their talents and urging them to use them to acquire new skills and opportunities.

Club history
The club was established in the year 2010 by Kamuzi Banda (Ex-AFC player), Kennedy Anyango (Nairobits alumni) and Samwel Kimindiri (Trainer at Nairobits). The club was called Rangers F.C though it didn’t have any links with the Rangers F.C (http://www.rangers.co.uk/) in the United Kingdom or Posta Rangers in Kenya whatsoever. It was just a group of friends coming together to play football for fun and participate in MYSA (www.mysakenya.org) zonal league, the team lacked a lot things from uniforms, footballs, leadership and talented player s, and this was expected because their major goal was to play for fun.

Early in 2011 the three founders of Ranger F.C in Mathare North approached Wilson Masaka (Founder of Wilsen Initiative/ Web developer / ICT trainer at Nairobits) for a proposal to steer the ‘ship’ with his many valuable experiences working with the youth, community and being well exposed football player having played in the Norway cup in 1997, 1998 and 1999 respectively. At first Wilson couldn’t just say yes, because as he had mentioned he didn’t want to do something that only him had the passion, so he was hesitant to repeat past experiences whereby he helped a group of youth establish a football club which was misguided by the passion of some of the youth of ‘get rich quick’ mentality or what’s there for me attitude expecting everything from one person while contributing nothing. After many persuasion and assurance ( by Kennedy, Samwel and Kamuzi) Wilson could see a new dawn in generational change in youth who were seeking guidance, very passionate and ready to cooperate in seeing their team grow by actively participating in administrative issues of the club and that’s exactly what Wilson was looking for in a team.

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When Wilson Joined hands with the three founders the first thing was to rebrand the team and giving it some unique visibility around and beyond. Some of the new ideas brought by Wilson and the team are;

•  Ranger F.C changed its name to Mathare North Rangers F.C (M.N.R) inspiring champions…
• The team bought one uniform(18 jerseys ) which are all written the name of the team
• One member of Wilsen Initiative donated one set of uniform (18 jerseys)
• We have at least seven footballs of good quality.
• We are expecting new uniforms from Wilson’s friend from Germany early August 2012.
• A part from the material gains we have a great match of skills and talent within the team and everyone is working together in making small contributions when it’s required.

Having mentioned all this team still needs more support to help us reach our vision especially in our sports tourism program to engage the youth even further and link them with opportunities.  So if you have an idea or a football team and you would like us to do an exchange with your team or organization kindly write to info[at]wilsenx.com or Wilson.masaka[at]gmail.com

Mathare North Rangers F.c

We thank everyone for the support offered so far to our club and general direction of Wilsen Initiative.
Team Officials
Wilson Masaka – Head coach, Thomas Abungu – Asstitant coach, Team managers- Kamuzu Banda, Samwel Kimindiri, Kenndey Onyango, Team Captain- Edwin Kipkoech

Written by Evaline Akida