UNODC
Kenya
Scoring against Substance Abuse

"My name is Moses Kinyanjui. I am 19 years old. There are two of us in my family – my mother and I. I stay at the Kwa-Njenga slum, east of Nairobi. I dropped out of school when I was 10 years old because we are poor, and I had to help my mother sell local beer at the bar to get money. Because of that and family problems, I went to the streets.

After many years in the streets, I went back home, and I found other good friends in the village. I joined them, and they took me to Angaza where I began to play football, learn about social issues and get to know myself. I stopped taking drugs and my mother is happy, but her situation has not changed. I hope that one day when I become a good artist, I will make some money and get my mother out of alcohol and the other things she does in the bar.

Now I am still with Angaza, so I want to say that the club is good because it made me a good boy. I became a good footballer and I think it can also help me through my arts training and the other programmes. So I thank God for doing that in my life, and I would like to go on with Angaza".

For Moses Kinyanjui and dozens of other kids from poor slum communities in Nairobi, Angaza – a youth NGO that works on substance abuse issues – provides a daily source of good, clean fun, as well as information about health, substance abuse and other issues of interest to young people.

The UN Office on Drugs and Crime’s Global Youth Network project provided financial and technical support to Angaza to run a sport-based initiative called Scoring against Substance Abuse (SASA). As a youth-to-youth peer prevention project, Angaza planned the SASA programme in partnership with the youth who live in the target areas. The emphasis is on creating a sustainable programme for leadership development in an effort to empower young people to provide positive peer anti-drug messages.

At the start of the SASA project one teacher at the local school said, "Most of my pupils are encouraged by their parents to take liquor�because they believe that it boosts immunity against malaria and other opportunistic infections". That was then. Now the SASA project is helping young people play a positive role within their peer groups and communities.