Placards raised by Gor Mahia and AFC Leopards players showing the faces of 22 missing children before the start of their derby on Sunday evening in Kasarani led to the finding of two missing children.
This is according to Missing Children Kenya Executive Director Maryanne Munyendo who revealed the details to Citizen TV.
The two children; Prudence and Chantel Gift had been missing for three weeks.
"A few hours after the match, an anonymous caller told me that he had seen a child that looked exactly like Prudence whom he saw on a placard before the match started... We gave him directions and my niece found her way back to us," Prudence's uncle told the reporters.
He revealed that Prudence went missing on the 4th of May and they were very grateful to the planners of that initiative that rejoined them with their child.
Maryanne Munyendo noted that they founded the NGO Missing Children Kenya a year ago.
"It is a community-led initiative that was founded to increase the search efforts of missing children on all platforms at no cost," she stated.
"We saw that the Kenya Premier League (KPL) draws a lot of attention from Kenyans and saw it as a platform to create awareness about missing children. Especially the Mashemeji Derby, it brings so many together and the fans can talk about this issue during the match," the director remarked.
The campaign for finding the missing children was organized by the KPL in collaboration with the two teams and Missing Child Kenya.
"We are a very happy lot now because two children are now reunited with their families after the placards were raised during the weekend match," the director added.
There have been several reported cases in the nation in the past few months regarding missing children. Sleuths from the DCI recently uncovered illegal adoption schemes being run by some of the children's homes in the country. This led to the government banning adoption of Kenyan children by foreigners.
