About Us

History

The Otto Benecker Foundation was founded in 1996 by young people led by Coach Bonface Viyuka and Mr. John Muganda Chavasu, a development sociologist in Mathare, Nairobi's second-largest informal settlement. It began as a girls' football team, strongly supported by Father Otto Benecker of St. Benedict Parish, Mathare, and was later named in his honor. The team initially comprised girls aged 10 to 18 and later included young women over 18. The foundation's focus on girls was driven by the lack of safe, structured spaces for young girls to engage socially, access training, mentorship, coaching, and essential socio-economic services. Football served as a powerful platform to address challenges faced by adolescent girls and became a catalyst for change. Over time, the organization expanded to include adolescent boys and girls across various age groups.

 VISION

A consciously functional society supportive of the well-being of Youth, Women, and Vulnerable groups.

MISSION

To create opportunities for socio-economic empowerment of youth, women, and special groups via the promotion of dialogues, partnerships, and rights advocacy.

CORE VALUES

Professionalism: Consistently achieving high standards both in work and the way you work that ends up with high-quality results. There are core characteristics such as competence, knowledge, consciousness, integrity, respect, emotional intelligence, appropriateness, and confidence. Our staff are encouraged to exhibit these values in practice whenever they conduct organizational duties.

Integrity: The quality of being honest and having strong moral principles. All staff are encouraged to be morally upright building honesty and trust in all their engagements.

Transparency: The availability of accurate information about issues and commitments and the performance of actors. Our partners, our community, and our staff should expect accurate information as this builds trust and a sound basis for decision-making.

 Accountability: Is holding institutions, staff, and actors accountable for commitments and performance. All community engagements between staff, duty bearers and the community should be guided by holding people to account for actions and resources availed to them.

 Respect for human rights: Upholding the bill of rights as enshrined in Kenya law that promotes the enjoyment of human rights (legal capacity - everyone has the inherent right and obligations to make their decisions). We respect the rights of communities, women, youth, and special groups.

 Beneficiary Focus: Being mindful of the rightsholder's decision-making power by way of involvement and participation. We promote co-creation with communities based on the idea that ‘’communities are not empty glasses’’.

 Equity: we recognize that we do not all start from the same place and must acknowledge and make adjustments to imbalances. Hence women, youth, and special groups begin at a disadvantage as compared to others, we encourage positive discrimination to walk with everyone in development.

Ownership & sharing:

At Otto Benecker Foundation, local stakeholders are involved in the decision-making processes with the community where activities are carried out with local participation during the course of project implementation. Besides, efficient community involvement, cost sharing and co-ordination with key stakeholders and government agencies is prioritized to enable community ownership. Bottom-up:

Otto Benecker Foundation ensures that local actors participate in decision-making about the strategy and in the selection of the priorities to be pursued in their local area. By involving, combining and interacting with local communities, it is easier to achieve better overall results.

Sustainability:

As far as possible, Otto Benecker Foundation strives to ensure that organizational and community based activities supported through community development project benefits are realized, maintained and continue after the end of the project.

MAIN OBJECTIVE

To improve agriculture production, access to healthcare services, environmental          conservation, information technology, alleviate poverty and nurture talents through    sports.

Legal Status: Registered Under NGO Coordination Board

Reg. No:          OP.218/051/18-253/11448

Bank:     ABSA Bank

               Kenya Commercial Bank

               Stanbic bank