The sporting Nobel nominees

In amongst all the tales of greed, violence and other sundry sleaziness that characterises global football nowadays, Kevin Mitchell has an uplifting story in today's Observer about the Kenyan team Mathare United, who have been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize:

Mathare Valley spreads north from Kenya's capital, a running sore of poverty covered in corrugated iron, where street children use machetes and guns to survive in an environment of murder, rape, TB and cholera. Mathare - a shanty town housing 600,000 of the world's poorest people - and other Nairobi slums account for 80 per cent of Kenya's Aids victims, 700 of whom die every day.

Only two in 10 adults have legitimate employment. There is little formal education for the youth, and alcoholism, fuelled by the illicit stills that turn out fiery chang'aa, is rife.

But MYSA resolved 16 years ago to fight the tide of deprivation. It was then that a Canadian United Nations official, Bob Munro, saw local kids having a kickabout with a jwala, a polythene-bag-and-twine football. He offered to referee if they helped clean the area of litter, setting in motion an unstoppable process of mutual cooperation.

From this 'pay-it-back' approach sprung leagues for 14,000 children. In return for the facilities and organisation, the players keep their neighbourhood clean, plant trees and attend Aids, pregnancy and drug-awareness classes.

There are scholarships, too, for photography, music and drama. Teams get points for their work as well as their football.

My colleague Tom Templeton has been there. He reports: 'It's an awesome sight as, on pitches of hard, red mud dotted around the slum borrowed from the police and churches [MYSA own only one], hundreds of kids watch intense 11-a-side matches of barefoot kids, awaiting their turn.'

Munro stresses that this is not 'a white man in Africa story'. He points out that the 63 staff who run the scheme are all former or current slum-dwellers who played in the leagues.

'So far,' says Peter Serry, the director of MYSA, 'the scheme has made life more bearable and broken down many of the tribal, territorial and prejudicial barriers of life in Kenya.'

MYSA's youth teams have won several international tournaments, and this season the under-16s beat Ajax Amsterdam twice in Norway. 'They were tougher than us, and stronger,' says the captain Nelson Ngari, 'but we were more determined.'