Mukuru footballers raising funds through Kenyan art

The South B Sports Academy have been training young Kenyan footballers for several years. And just recently, Swedish soccer players came to Kenya and met the young sportsmen and women from the Mukuru ‘slum’.

The Swedes were so impressed with the children’s skill and enthusiasm, they invited 20 of them to attend two tournaments in Stockholm.

The trips will be all-expenses-paid apart from air fare for the youth, ages 14-16. But for the children, that is a huge hurdle to surmount.

The cost of air fare may mean the youth miss an opportunity of a lifetime to participate in the Sodertalje International Football Cup (SIFC).

But Kenyan artists from the Eastlands’ Mukuru Art Centre as well as well as from Kuona Trust and the Railway Museum ‘Dust Depo’ Studio have all chipped in to donate their art works to both art exhibitions and online art auctions aimed at raising sufficient funds to get the whole South B United Soccer team to Sweden.

Among the artists who have donated to the exhibition and art auction are John Silver Kimani, Patrick Mukabi, Cyrus Kabiru, Onyis Martin, Adam Masava and many others.

The first art exhibition was organized in haste last weekend so that few local art lovers even knew the artworks were for sale but now, Adam Masava who is organizing the team’s fundraising initiative, has put the S.U.S.A. fundraising art auction online at Facebook for all the world to see and buy Kenyan art for frankly throwaway prices.

“Additional artists are donating more artworks every day and we are putting them all online at Facebook,” said Masava, several of whose donated art works sold the first day of the first SUSA art exhibition held at Kuona Trust.

Thanks to Kuona’s support, the young footballers will have another three day art exhibition at Kuona from June 19th through 21st.
What’s exciting about the showcase of art works by young Kenyans that one can see on their Facebook page is the fact that many of the artists are unknown and ‘emerging’ so especially for art investors, it could be a good time to get these artists’ works while they can still be obtained at affordable prices.

If the young Kenyans succeed in reaching Sweden and taking part in the tournament, they will be sharing the football field with young people from all over the world.

They will be coming from Argentina, Brazil, Peru, Spain, Hungary, Finland, Malta, Singapore, Germany, Norway, Denmark and the United States.