Discover the story of Wazalendo Hockey Club Origin
Wazalendo Hockey Club was founded in 1995 as a self-supporting club following the disbandment of the Kenya Breweries hockey team, which played in the league for a number of years before then. Since then, the club has focused on the development of young players in the sport through identification, mentoring and provision of opportunities to young talented players. This has been the core vision of the club.
Over the last 27 years of Wazalendo existence, the club is proud to have over 150 registers members and players, has managed to register 3 teams at different levels of league competition and in 2 scenarios managed to represent Kenya in the Africa club of club championship (2007 and 2021) in Cairo and Accra respectively after emerging 1st runners up in the Kenya hockey premier league competitions.
Wazalendo is one of the few sports clubs in Kenya that is legally registered with the Ministry of Sports as a sports club, and through this, it has established strong corporate governance structures as supported by the club constitution and related policies.
To fully realise strategic transformation in the years to come and to fully achieve our vision of youth development, in 2010, Wazalendo introduced and has been running the Young Players Development (YPD) program that envisions social transformation of members through the game of hockey. Like at its inception, the Wazalendo YPD programme, whose focus age group is between 12 to 20 years old, seeks to achieve two things:
- The growth of its members into able and capable participants in society. People who would also take over the leadership of the club, of family, of society.
- Being a hockey-playing club, helping to impart, nurture and grow our talents as hockey players and provide opportunities to play, because this is the game we love, we spend a lot of time and resources on it, so we’d better make it worth our while, grow and enjoy it.
Over the last 12 years, Wazalendo Hockey Club has run a very successful Social Transformation project under the Young Players Development (YPD) Program that has largely seen the lives of a number of boys tremendously changed for the better through the various opportunities available via the club.
In line with this achievement and in tandem with the club’s motto of being more than just a game and with a focus on creating a greater, sustainable and long-lasting impact in our surrounding, the club has made a deliberate decision to launch a Social Transformation and Girl Child Empowerment program that is focused on the development of the girl in a similar manner as the boys have grown at Wazalendo Hockey Club.
Through this program, the sport of hockey has been used as a tool for social transformation of the girl child, where Wazalendo recruits young potential hockey players from disadvantaged backgrounds, gives them opportunities both in sport and education, while mentoring them into a better future.
Apart from just playing hockey, Wazalendo prides itself as a transformative club that fully lives up to its motto of ‘More than a game’. As a self-supported club, all these activities usually have a draining effect on the available resources, and we always call out to our well-wishers to support us and walk with us through the journey of transforming the youth into meaningful citizens.