GIVING DIGEST | Sandra Nabweteme’s Return of Gratitude
Some journeys take you far. But the most powerful ones lead you home.
When Sandra Nabweteme stepped onto the dusty field behind Katwe Market, the same ground that first cradled her cleats, she wasn’t just coming back as a football star. She was coming back as proof. Proof that a girl from a slum, with a borrowed dream and bare ambition, could rise to global heights, and choose to reach back.
Now playing professionally for Santos Laguna in Mexico, Nabweteme returned not with fanfare, but with tools: footballs, cones, kits, items simple in form, but rich in meaning. Each one was a message: you belong here, you matter, your dream is valid. Her current club supported the effort, but it was her spirit that carried it home.
She didn’t just give gear, she gave permission: for young girls to take up space on the pitch, for boys to see strength in humility, for parents to support their children’s gifts, even if those gifts come dressed in sport, not schoolbooks. In a community where the field has shrunk and the margins have grown, her presence was a loud reminder that the slum is not the ceiling.
🌍 Giving back isn’t about charity. It’s about justice. About honouring the soil that grew you by watering what still lives in it.
Source: Daily Monitor, May 20, 2025 – “Nabweteme Relinks with Home” by Makhtum Muziransa