Nairobi’s Motivated Mindset Dancers (MMD) at the Tukuza wards // Photo courtesy
When the world shut down in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic and many families watched their lives fall apart, Brian Otieno Owino was among those who felt the weight of the crisis. The pandemic cost him his job as a team-building facilitator for tour companies in Nairobi, leaving him with nothing to fall back on. The city that once roared with life had become still. In that silence, however, something inside him refused to die. Dance had always been the thing that carried Brian, so he followed that instinct.
One day, while scrolling through TikTok, he saw the “Jerusalema dance” challenge going viral. He took the challenge, and his video clip went viral. His dance moves caught the attention of many who wanted to learn from him. That moment became the seed of Motivated Mindset Dancers.
“I had nothing to lose,” Brian says, adding that he recorded the video and posted it on his LinkedIn account. “I didn’t even think anyone would watch,” he recalls
The video blew up. Children in the neighbourhood began stopping him on the street to ask him to teach them the moves. What started as a moment of boredom quickly transformed into a spark of purpose. “I saw excitement in their eyes,” he says. “And I thought… maybe this can be something bigger”, he added.
What began as a few children dancing on bare ground in a cramped space has now grown into a community-based organisation with a mission to educate, empower, entertain, expose children to opportunities and shape their values through art.
Brian insists that discipline is the backbone of everything. Before a child joins, he meets with the parents, explains the expectations and makes sure the child is genuinely interested in learning. Over time, volunteers joined, choreographers came in, sponsors chipped in, and a movement began to form around one belief: that children in the slums deserve a chance to dream.
One of their earliest victories was renting a tiny room for four thousand shillings a month. The walls were rusty iron sheets, the floor was dusty, yet they called it their studio because it represented safety. Insecurity soon caught up with them and their speakers and other equipment were stolen, something Brian says is almost normal where they live. Even so, they bought new ones and kept going. As their online presence grew, they began attracting attention from outside Kenya. They were honoured in the United Kingdom in the Art and Culture category for an international online dance competition, making them the first African crew to receive that kind of recognition. The spotlight brought in partnerships with the Haiti Foundation, which supported them financially through proceeds from cryptocurrency awareness campaigns, while the Hip Hop Congress National in New York occasionally helped with costumes and part of the rent.
Despite the growth, Brian acknowledges that finances remain their greatest challenge, particularly following the reduction of United States Agency for International Development (USAID) funding, which had previously supported local community programmes.
Motivated Mindset Dancers still run several impactful activities, which include exposing children living inside and outside the slums to art through slum motivation tours, exchange programmes with international schools and street-feeding activities that provide food to street children and vulnerable families. Every weekend after practice, the children share a cooked meal donated by a nearby Indian hotel, something Brian considers an important form of encouragement.
The challenges they face are beyond finances. Many people still believe dance and graffiti promote indiscipline. Some parents blame the group whenever their children misbehave at home, unaware that Brian’s work is actually keeping the children away from drugs. He says the children are eager to learn, but without proper costumes, good cameras, stable rent, and enough food, the work becomes difficult.
Still, there is visible progress. Compared to 2020, when the group was first formed, Brian speaks with a sense of fulfilment. They have won several awards, including FEMA, Extreme, Timiza, Tukuza and the African Children of the Year Award in South Africa. Their content creation has gained significant online attention as they focus on messages that go beyond dance. The presence of the dance group has reduced drug abuse among the local youth. Children who once spent their days roaming the streets now spend their weekends practicing, learning new skills and winning competitions. Brian believes that in the next ten years, cases of drug abuse among children in the area will drastically drop because he has already seen the change happening.
Among the dancers is eleven-year-old Andie Miles. He says he joined the group because he did not want to stay idle at home. His younger brother, who is only four years old, is also part of the group and entertains everyone with his jokes and dance moves. Another member, Valeria Rose, joined in 2020 and has grown into one of the most confident performers. She balances school and dance carefully, often attending tuition before practice. She already earns from performances and has won multiple awards. Her only challenge is outgrowing her costumes and the shortage of cameras, which slows down their content creation.
Eighteen-year-old David Kanali says joining Motivated Mindset Dancers changed the direction of his life. Before he joined, he believed he would live in the slums forever. Now he has visited places he never thought he would see and met people he only admired on screens. He has become a videographer and camera operator, skills he learned inside the team, not in school.
The group also gives back to the community through street feeding programmes, which help reduce drug abuse and depression among vulnerable children. They organise monthly cleanup exercises and use them to teach children the importance of social responsibility. Brian holds mentorship sessions with both children and parents, encouraging families to support their children’s talents and treat co-curricular abilities as valuable.
They collaborate with churches and gospel artists, creating TikTok dances for various songs, which has further increased their visibility. Beyond dance, members have learned extra skills including salon work, videography and photography, which gives them alternative paths of growth.
Brian says he only receives security support from the government despite the Social Protection, Culture and Recreation Sector being a crucial component of Kenya’s development agenda. His biggest dream is to build a fully equipped dance academy in Mathare, a place where art and education exist in one space. He imagines a school where children do not have to choose between talent and academics.
