The Oasis Community Center Mathare

The Oasis 'Community Centre' Mathare is a legally registered community-based organization. Established in July 2013, with mission of providing practical solutions to the disadvantaged and marginalized youth and children of the Mathare slum in Nairobi. A safe-space for youth and children, Oasis Mathare offers ICT training, a community library, mentorship opportunities, and early childhood development activities. Oasis Mathare provides a relief in ‘the desert of the absence of affordable ICT training service and general youth development opportunities in the slum’.

The specific objectives of Oasis Mathare are:
1. To empower the youth and children of Mathare to take control of their own development through ICT and education
2. To give youth the tools they need to champion environmental sustainability, health and wellbeing, and productive livelihoods.
3. To reduce extreme poverty, crime rates and disease among the youth
4. To improve the literacy level and reading culture among disadvantaged youth for their personal empowerment.

Local Context: The Mathare slum, with a population of around 500,000 families, is one of the largest informal settlements in Nairobi. Just like any other informal settlement in the world, the Mathare slum is characterised by poor housing structures made of old iron-sheets, inadequate or absent sanitation facilities, large mountains of garbage or solid waste materials, poor infrastructure, lack of proper health facilities, unemployment, high illiteracy levels, and high population density - of which youth constitute 65%. In Mathare, HIV/AIDS has led to high dependence rate and increased number of orphans. Due to a lack of job opportunities, many youth find themselves engaging in major societal vices such as handling and abusing drugs, violence, mugging, commercial sex work, and youth gangs.