Very few hockey athletes anywhere in the world give back to the community that which was never given to them at the prime of their playing career. To turn around such a misfortune to become the support base and inspiration to others, requires a special kind of heart.
A name familiar to only those who have met her, seen and heard of her work, Rael Nyte has warmed the hearts of many back home in Kenya.
Picture the scene. An old marram stadium, not properly leveled, old metal-boxed shaped goals and two trees on both sides of the field acting as technical benches; that is the sad truth of majority of hockey fields in rural Kenya.
The fans do not care, however. This has been the way of life for generations that have produced some of the finest Kenyan International hockey players. But Rael who says her mission is not to change the status quo, is doing exactly that. Her work is inspiring a generation and igniting a movement to change how hockey is run in the country. Youth development programs are already sprouting in different pockets around the country. Essentially, her academy Tunza Sports, has for the last 3 years unintentionally provided a blueprint on how to grow and the develop the game from the grassroots.
Rael is a Kenyan born American citizen living in New Jersey. She is a former Kenya national hockey player, a youth coach un the US and a Technical official affiliated with USA Field Hockey and Pan American Hockey Federation.
Giving from a Place of Love.
Simple, modest and soft spoken, Rael Nyte has placed sports at the center of her philanthropic journey which encompasses passion and compassion that breaks barriers which have been instituted just for being different. She epitomizes selfless giving which comes from a place of hurt, experiences she draws from her childhood.
“When you suffer trauma as a child you learn compassion. I come from a deep dark place, where I didn’t get what I should have had, what I think is essential to every player, or person. It is one thing to be poor, but it cuts deeper for people not to have a care in the world for you. I found a way to transform this lack of necessities and love into an abundance of giving.
However, giving handouts is not the in the fabric of her philanthropy. The recipient must become part of the process with a resulting measurable impact. Therefore, she found her niche in using field hockey to touch lives of the very vulnerable.
“When I first landed in the USA in 2005, I was embraced by a clan of a hockey fraternity in the Northeast region of the US at the NEFHA league. I suddenly acquired American moms, aunts, and sisters. I found my way around because I now had people who I could turn to. Part of the reason Tunza exists is so that I pass this forward. It is out of sheer defiance and using the one opportunity I got [Coming to the USA] that I was able to wiggle herself out of poverty; but then it dawned on me that not everyone gets this kind of opportunity and so I decided to be ‘that’ opportunity to others.”
Giving back through Tunza Sports and the Motivation Behind it.
Tunza is a Swahili words that means to preserve, take care of, harness. Tunza is a USA based non-profit 501c3 organization that uses hockey to address real societal problems faced by the rural communities far removed from CBDs. At the core of this is education, where children who are underprivileged, underrepresented, and live-in abject poverty can pursue post- secondary school education and return to build their own communities.
“My passion to rebuild lives, comes from years of hardship due to lack of resources whilst pursuing education and a career, and thus I know the pain, the despair, and the repercussions of not having that external stimulus.”
In rural Kenya, vibrant young children are stripped of their childhood by imposed parental duties of looking after their younger siblings, collecting firewood, and walking many miles to the river to fetch water. They then abandon school or perform poorly which results in a vicious cycle of poverty.
The motivation of Tunza was as a result of three main factors - unfulfilled dreams, experience drawn from coaching and mentoring abroad, and the necessity to measure the impact of giving.”
I had the potential to excel at a young age, but had no support system, where my dreams were ridiculed, and ideas suppressed. This experience made gave me the intuition to recognize children who are going through the same experience. Then coaching youth in the USA broadened my role as a sister and a mother. It was a gratifying experience to see the positive life changing impact I had on some of my players. Once I pursued philanthropy, I realized that the gratification of giving soon waned in the absence of measurable impact.
I wanted a situation where I could follow through and see to fruition the assistance provided. Giving out resources without a long-term connection and ability to follow through to see the change it brings, was no longer the path I wished to take. Starting Tunza, was going to address all these three factors. I want young players in my community to have what I wish I had had. I want to do for them what I wish was done for me.
Using Education to Break the Cycle of Poverty
Tunza engages with very poor communities, where without an external stimuli, poverty becomes a guaranteed inheritance. The worthiness of the program is placed heavily on according the players post-secondary education, and therefore we promote field hockey to attract athletic scholarships from the schools or individuals and organizations.
Tunza also uses field hockey to create awareness to the issues faced by the children who join our program such as Forced marriages, Child Labor, Child Abuse by relatives, Extreme Poverty, Disease, Malnutrition, Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) Lack of Menstrual Hygiene Resources and Alcoholism. Girls are the most vulnerable on all these issues and so we focus on girls’ transition into high school which is where the biggest and most permanent gaps of gender inequality in education exist. Our PR goal is to make deafening noise so the government can drive their economic programs closer to these villages.
Tunza’s objective has only been met halfway. Despite the setbacks our biggest achievement has been introduce the game of Field Hockey to over 300 children where it never existed before and to inspire them to want to overcome the restraint of their environment. The program is still young, and the first cohorts are only sophomores, a great achievement given the challenges, but not without the lingering threat that parents can pull them off from school, when hardship gets worse so they can help at home or in exchange for dowry.
Success stories.
Tunza is a space that allows others to become part of the process that would ultimately transform their lives, as opposed to just dishing handouts. To be considered for a scholarship, a student must attend field hockey training and participate in community events.
So far, we have rolled out a scholarship program that has been embraced by several hockey playing schools in Kenya. We also ran a successful sanitation Pads Drive in 2021 that will benefit over 200 girls throughout the year.
Tunza has also been able to provide Sex Education and Life Skills to curb teen pregnancies and prepare the girls for post-secondary life. The pandemic lockdown provided an opportunity to the engage the girls in Stay-home life skills projects as well as a breast cancer awareness campaign.
At the core of Tunza organization is passion. Passion for hockey and using that passion to show compassion for others. It would be unsustainable for me to base my work on the needs of the poor, [because needs can be massive] and therefore base it on my ability to lighten their burden either by doing or asking others to help. The program has its fair share of challenges. I continue to receive humongous support from friends who donate equipment and material support, but financial aspect is very limited. The website www.tunzasports.org has a donate button that provides different option for donating funds.
