Nairobi — Three-time Nagano Marathon champion Isaac Macharia has called for partnerships in sports and music as a way of empowering young disadvantaged talents through funding and training to improve their livelihoods.
Macharia believes young people -including in the sports industry - can turn their ideas and skills into a source of profit only if they receive all the support they need from all quarters.
"We are focused on empowering young entrepreneurs through means such as seed funding. We are looking for partners to help us to assist those running small business enterprises to enable them to improve their ventures, such as building cottage industries in their home areas using the experience they have acquired from us," Macharia said.
The 40-year-old, who boasts a personal best of 2:07:16 from the 2008 Dubai Marathon, is the presently the head of Kenswed Organisation, a non-profit initiative that provides educational, health and vocational services to youths from humble backgrounds in the Ngong' community.
Established 10-years ago, they have collaborated with various foreign organisations, including Sweden-based Zelmerlöw & Björkman Foundation (ZBF).
ZBF is the brainchild of musician Man Zermerlow and former tennis player Jonas Bjorkman, which seek to empower African youths with skills to overcome socio-economic barriers in the society and improve their lives and that of the community.
Macharia also runs an athletics training camp in Ngong to mould young talent into excellent runners.
"I want to thank our partners who have come on board to support us with the vocational training... providing us with laptops. We look forward to more partnerships so that we may reach as many youths as possible with these opportunities," Macharia, who made his road race debut in 2004 at the Amref Half Marathon in Nairobi, said.
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Over the weekend, Kenswed celebrated another milestone in its decade-long existence with the launch of a new dental clinic in the area.
The retired road runner said the new facility will go a long way in meeting the dental healthcare needs of the local community.
"This will come in handy for us because all our students will be attended to at the dental clinic... plus the local community around us. There are very many people who struggle to access these services and we are coming out to play our part in meeting these needs," he said.
Speaking at the same time, Zermerlow spoke of the impact of sports, as well as music, on creating positive change at the grassroots.
"We have a music studio at the vocational training centre and I am hoping to make it even better so that more students can get into music, learn to play instruments. In addition my colleague at ZBF (Jonas Björkman) and I want music and sports to be a big part of Kenswed. That's why we created a multi-sports facility at the middle of Kenswed," he said.
