Mathare Environmental Conservation Youth Group started in 1997 as a response to joblessness and pollution. A group of young football players noticed an opportunity to help keep the streets clean and create jobs. By doing door to door garbage collection, residents no longer had to dispose of waste themselves and were willing to pay young community members to do it. Where once a mountain of garbage existed, now sits the Mathare One Stop Youth Centre, a lighthouse in the community of youth-led action and development. 

For over 20 years, MECYG has fought to bring opportunities to their community through waste management, youth development and public space. Young people are able to engage with the community and create leadership roles which help address issues facing the 50,000+ residents of Mlango Kubwa. 

We currently host the Mathare Environmental One Stop Centre, a recycling business, two football fields, an ICT centre, a kitchen and feeding program and many other projects. We are the co-convenor of the Youth-led COVID-19 Emergency Response coalition, where we have fought to protect the community from the spread of the COVID-19 virus, and done by International Youth Day 2020 over 2,000,000 hand washes and distributed over 10,000 masks. 

We have three campaigns currently to support our work:

1. Youth-Led COVID-19 programme which supports our coalitions work to fight the virus 

2. COVID19 Heroine Call to Action which supports Rodah Ingashani whose home was invaded and son shot. We have been able to provide money for the hospital bills and loss of essential goods. We are now supporting her sons convalescence and them finding a new home. Rodah is the coordinator of Wonderful Mothers, Mathare Environmental’s gender outreach worker in and is an attendant of one of our COVID-19 prevention station. 

3. Mathare Environmental Support programme, which seeks to raise the resources to support al the programmes of Mathare Environmental and offers the chance to become a patron of the organization. 

 Thank you in advance for any support you can give!! 

Isaac Muasa 

Coordinator, Mathare Environmental