Coastal Queens Basketball
This project's parent organization is Glad's House
It operates in Kenya
It uses Basketball
Entered the Best New Project
More about Coastal Queens Basketball
Many young children, (last estimate was 30,000) some as young as 4 years old, in Mombasa, Kenya, are so poor they live on the streets. Life for them is a bleak struggle for survival, where drugs, alcohol and crime are often the only means of escape. For young girls it is even harder and many end up in the sex trade or ‘marriages of convenience’. We are ‘partnering’ with the Mombasa Olympic Youth Organisation (MOYO), which, has been set up by a former Kenyan Olympic athlete, Fred (Bokey) Achola to give these young people that help. He is using sport to reach this vulnerable group, to give them information, motivation and support to help them steer clear of drugs and crime and avoid HIV infection. In May 2007 he established the Coastal Queens Basketball Club. The club encourages girls’ participation in basketball and the organization’s activities by registering them in teams, organising leagues and tournaments, as well as health education and training. The club has functioned reasonably well with very limited facilities. We currently use a basketball court in the grounds of a local school Bomu Primary, but this is very restricted and of poor quality.