It began with a social media post from a 13-year-old playing in Chelsea’s academy who wanted to offer spare kit to people less fortunate than herself.
A decade on Malaika Meena, an established WSL2 player, finds herself shifting through more than 1,000 items collected from players, fans or coaches in the past month alone, as her family tradition of donating football boots and kit to schoolchildren in Tanzania has blossomed into a movement larger than anything she could have imagined.
“For me it’s all about resource allocation,” the Bristol City midfielder says. “It’s not about trying to ‘save Tanzania’ or anything like that, but just about trying to give an equal opportunity to everybody. Football’s a sport that’s given me so much and given me so many experiences and I want everyone to be able to experience that – the joy of playing football. It should be a sport that everybody can enjoy, no matter where you’re from, your income or background, whether you’re a boy, girl, whatever religion.”
Meena was born in England and raised just west of London but her parents were born in Tanzania and when the 23-year-old visits family in the country she usually stays with her grandma, who lives in Dar es Salaam, though her mum’s side of the family are from a more rural area in the north-east nearer to Kilimanjaro. The family have always tried to make charitable donations of football boots but Meena’s successful career has raised the profile of the operation dramatically, to the extent that she is trying to register a charity.
“I just put a post out 10 years ago, on my Instagram, asking: ‘If anyone’s got any kit, we’re going to take some to Tanzania,’ and I got so many more messages than I thought I would!” the England youth international says. “At that time we went with at least 100 items and we gave them to a lot of the kids at one of the schools.
“I’m quite lucky now that I’ve got a little bit of a platform where I know so many different players. I have links in so many different teams I’ve reached out to – Bristol City, Newcastle, people at Man City – so there are so many different people that I’ve been able to get stuff from and I think: ‘Why not try to use what I got to be able to donate kit?’ In the last month we’ve got over a thousand items of kit that I’m going to take to Tanzania, which is just incredible. So many people are going to benefit from this.”
Many tourists enjoy visiting Tanzania for spectacular safari holidays, beach trips to Zanzibar or trekking up Kilimanjaro, but last year the Global Finance Magazine listed Tanzania as the 29th-poorest country in the world. The women’s national team are 121st in Fifa’s rankings, the men 113th, but the sport is beloved by schoolchildren.
“Tanzania is my favourite country in the world, so I’m very biased whenever I’m speaking about it,” Meena says. “Everyone’s so loving, everyone’s so helpful. Normally when we go to Tanzania, we get two big suitcases each but we don’t need all that [luggage allowance] just for two weeks, so we usually take one full suitcase each just filled with football boots and kit.
“Now this time around, because we’ve got so many items, we’ve actually started shipping items over to Tanzania. So we’ve already sent four boxes over [this year] of kit. Now, since I’ve already got so much more than I expected, I’m going to think of ways to do fundraisers and stuff like that to be able to send these stuff over, not just when I go, so people can benefit all year round, not just when I’m on holiday.
“Some people send things [by post] to me but I try to, where I can, just to collect it from people so it’s not too much of a hassle for people. Some people drop kit off at games. I’ve really enjoyed doing it.”
Meena has dreams of expanding and helping to provide school equipment such as desks, chairs, educational resources or even decorating classrooms. “I’ve just been putting stuff on my personal Instagram but I’m definitely going to expand it and create its own Instagram page,” she says.
Meena started playing football for her local boys’ team, Burnham Juniors, just north of Slough, and, despite initially being “very shy” and worrying that “none of the boys were passing to me”, she went on to captain that team at the age of about seven. She then played for Chelsea’s academy from eight to 16, before switching to Arsenal’s youth team and moving to the United States to play in the college system while studying at Wake Forest University in North Carolina.
“I really loved my time there,” she says of the US. “I met some really great people, [the] football was very competitive out there, and just really good life experiences. It was hard in America sometimes, because I had two big injuries – I did my ACL and then two years later I broke my fibula – so those were definitely tough moments but I had a good support system around me. I learned a lot about hard work. Americans are very hardworking and they demand a lot out of you. Our schedules were crazy with school and then travelling for games.”
She was called into the England Under-23 squad in March 2025, having impressed after joining Bristol City in January 2025 when she returned to England. This February she switched to Ipswich on loan and helped them finish nine points clear of the relegation zone in ninth, a positive first season for the club in the second tier.
“Bristol [City] is another really nice place; I love the team and the great coaching staff. I just felt like I needed to carry on developing as much as I could, and that’s where Ipswich came in, which I thought was a great option. I’m really grateful for both clubs.”
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