International Vision Centre (IVC) Church’s Makena Sports Centre for champions, has set up an ultra modern Tennis and Basketball courts in Eldoret’s Maili Nne to help develop young talents in the region.
Led by Bishop Joseph Likavo, the team set up facilities that include a football pitch for the kids in career development.
Likavo said that God gave him a vision that was specifically to do with human development and encouragement.
“The development of this sports complex is to work towards sports accomplishment. We have made a field for kids’ soccer, not for elite football because our target is talent development from Pre-primary 1 and 2 and lower primary kids in soccer,” said Likavo.
With the region well known for the production of track, field and road running athletes, Likavo said that the modern basketball and lawn tennis court to raise talents.
“In this region we don’t have much basketball and tennis. We want to raise basketball players in this region to compete at the global stage. Tennis is a very well paying job but our children don’t have a chance to be part of tennis development. The purpose of this is to raise up children, develop talent and release them to the competitive world,” said Likavo adding that their vision is not just local but to go global because they have a gym for exercise for both the young and the old to keep healthy.
in order to help in achieving the sports dream, they have acquired the services of professionals in areas of training.
“We identified qualified tennis and basketball trainers who are highly trained but lacked facilities. I also talked to Tecla (Chemabwai) to help in athletics training. We also have someone to train in soccer. We are going to make this facility available where the parents or guardians will register their children for identification. Our goal is human development not monetizing the facility. This facility cost us a lot of money that we could do so many things but we gave this a priority,” he explained.
With the national government’s Talanta Hela program, Likavo said that the program is good for young people since there is no job market in the country.
“The government is not offering jobs but giving the chance for talents to flourish. It is hard to get jobs and talents will help in making money. If you travel across Europe you will find kids making money from talents by running. It is a good idea,” added Likavo.
While opening the facility, Uasin Gishu governor Jonathan Bii said that soon the Eldoret Municipality will become a city, which they need such facilities.
“When we become a city, we need to have great facilities like such so that when visitors come, we have recreational sites,” said Bii.
he said that the facility is one of us kind aligning with the government policy on monetization of talents.
“This is a place to grow talents, it will make our children to get opportunity to grow their talents ,nobody knows their future,” said the Governor adding that the county is endowed with many talents both in sports and leadership from world beaters in Athletics, rugby, football among others who reside in Uasin Gishu county.
“This is home of every vision, am happy to be part of this successful story.” Said Bii.
Kenya wheelchair basketball head coach Maurice Ouma said that the basketball court is so modern and there is none in this region.
“This is the best court so far. We want to utilize it maximum as a basketball family in the region. We want to urge players to be using it often,’ said Ouma, the former Kenya Basketball premier side Eldonets head coach.