Osotua Tournament: Football, Conservation, and Culture in Southern Kenya
This year, as the Football World Cup takes centre stage, you have a chance to help grow the love of the beautiful game in Kenya – while also promoting conservation! SORALO's Osotua Tournament is a community-led initiative using football as a launching pad to strengthen conservation, cultural integrity and leadership in the Maasai youth of Kenya's Southern Rift Valley region.
We want to make the 2026 bigger and better than ever - score this goal with us! Help SORALO raise $50,000 USD before the end of July. Donate today, share our mission, and select your exclusive thank-you gift by donating through the rewards below, Ashe Oleng (thank you)!
All funds raised up to $20,000 USD will be matched by Lion Recovery Fund – thanks to our teammates for this game-winning support!
100% of your gift will go directly to South Rift Association of Land Owners (SORALO). SORALO is part of WCN's Extended Network.
Let's see if we can score this goal together!
Deeply rooted in the Maasai pastoralist communities of Kenya's South Rift Valley, SORALO is a community organisation fostering a "culture of coexistence," where people, their livestock and wildlife – including elephants, lions, hyenas and many more iconic species - live and thrive side by side.
'Osotua' is a Maasai concept referring to interconnection and togetherness. Last year, SORALO’s Osotua Tournament brought together 5000 youths from across our 1.5 million hectare landscape, playing sports, celebrating culture and learning about coexistence. We reached 50,000 community members as organisers, implementers, players and spectators. We delivered 6 bespoke educational activities, held a community-wide health clinic and took part in 5 radio interviews all to spread the important messages of football, conservation and culture.
This year, we want to expand on this success: engaging 10,000 youths, introducing traditional Maasai sports, creating 10 more educational activities and much more!
To achieve this, we need your support! This year, as the Football World Cup takes centre stage, you have a chance to help grow the love of the beautiful game across the South Rift Valley of Kenya. SORALO is aiming to fundraise USD 50,000 before the end of July: let's see if we can score this goal together!
Donations will support facilitation and organisation of games, purchase of equipment, participant wellfare, prizes and more.
BENEFITS FOR COMMUNITIES AND WILDLIFE
The Osotua Tournament is a community-led project that uses football as a platform to engage 10,000+ Maasai youth from across SORALO’s 1.5 million hectare landscape on the topics of conservation, coexistence and culture. 'Osotua' is a Maasai concept referring to peace and togetherness, and as such the tournament also promotes unity and connection amongst youth across the landscape.
Culture: Finally, alongside football, Osotua also includes Maasai sports, music and drama activities, which promote culture and community cohesion. In a young demographic that is becoming increasingly urbanized, strengthening cultural pride and ownership is essential to maintaining the pastoralist culture that has for centuries, and continues to steward the landscape and ensure that all who live upon it – people, livestock and wildlife – are able to thrive.
Conservation: With participants and spectators gathered to watch and play games, Ranger Instructors help the young crowds overcome skeptical perceptions of conservation through educational activities about the importance of a healthy ecosystem and its links to community wellbeing, the links between culture and the environment, and how conservation can take many forms, growing out of local traditions and practices and serving local communities.
Coexistence: Ranger Instructors also train youth in real-life skills to live safely alongside wildlife – including evade/avoid skills for lion and elephant encounters and first aid. These skills not only help reduce the number of negative (and potentially dangerous) human-wildlife interactions but also increase the chance of survival of any victims of conflict as community members themselves are able to act a first responders. Although tolerance of key species (including elephants, lions and hyenas) continues to grow amongst SORALO communities, human-wildlife conflict incidences still occur and can lead to decreased community tolerance of wildlife, and even retaliatory killings. These skills reduce the number and severity of incidences, reducing resulting animosity and enabling and promoting coexistence.
Elephants: Over the last four years, we have seen a rapid increase in the prevalence of elephant attacks on people. The focus of conflict has now shifted to the Torosoei, Magadi and Mosiro regions, where large herds (100+) of elephants are now resident year-round, and attacks on community members while on their way to school, herding or walking home in the evenings are increasingly common. Dangerous retaliatory attacks on elephants by distraught communities – largely young people spurred on by political incitement - lead to further human casualties, continuing the conflict cycle. Tragically, last year, nine community members across the landscape were been killed by elephants. Despite this, the number of people reporting positive attitudes to elephants across the same landscape has doubled since 2023, and communities are even more committed to protecting their wildlife. The Osotua tournament was developed to help address this and other conservation challenges that affect, and are affected by, the Maasai youth of the South Rift.
Lions: SORALO's long-term goal is to create community and individual stewardship of lions to retain, recover and re-establish lions across the South Rift. Doing so has the dual benefit of safeguarding lions within the South Rift landscape and maintaining connectivity between the Greater Mara/Serengeti and the Amboseli Tsavo ecosystems. Much of this work depends on communities having the skills, interest and willingness to live safely alongside lions, and recognise their value to communities and the landscape. The Osotua tournament was developed to help youth recognise the value of, and take ownership over, the natural resources of the environment – including lions and other wildlife – and understand the importance of protecting them for themselves and future generations. In order to maintain and increase tolerance towards lions, a particular focus was given to education around evading and avoiding negative lion encounters.
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Photography Credits: SORALO