Girl Effect Challenge!

Thank you to all of those who donated to Shining Hope for Communities in the Girl Effect Challenge! Thanks to your generous contributions, the Girl Effect—an incredible movement promoting girl-focused programs—will now feature Shining Hope as one of the most innovative and impactful organizations working with girls and women worldwide. The Girl Effect has 17,500 followers on Twitter, 260,000 "likes" on Facebook and nearly 1,000,000 views on YouTube!  And it isn't hard to see why the Girl Effect is so popular: watch this video to learn why. 

As a featured Girl Effect organization, we will receive over $25,000 in funding for 2012, amazing exposure to Girl Effect followers all over the globe, and the chance to positively impact a lot of girls in Kibera!

Girls in Kibera deal with so much just to secure an education and protect their physical and emotional health. On top of the daily hardships that exist for those living in extreme poverty, young women in Kibera also face severely high rates of sexual assault and incest, and lack access to basic needs like food, shoes, clothing, and sanitary napkins.

Shining Hope is changing the lives of thousands of girls in Kibera through Shining Girls for Kibera, a self-named girls’ empowerment group. Shining Girls addresses the needs of adolescent girls in Kibera by giving them the training and resources they need to be economically self-sufficient.

In order to assist the Shining Girls in staying enrolled in school, they are provided with sanitary napkins, school uniforms, and school supplies. They are supported through a holistic program of entrepreneurship and vocational training, sexual health education, artistic opportunities, and more. Shining Hope’s goal is to help these young women become leaders for social change in the Kibera community. At the end of the day, Shining Girls gives adolescent girls in Kibera a safe space to share and just be teenagers! 

Know Kenya More

One of Shining Hope for Communities’ goals is to discover new markets in which to sell products made by SHOFCO Women’s Empowerment Program (SWEP). SWEP is a co-operative that supports HIV positive women living in Kibera, providing them with a living wage and entrepreneurship training. The ladies of SWEP make bags out of Kenyan fabric, called kanga, as well as beaded bracelets and other jewelry. SWEP is also a safe space for the women; they hold weekly support meetings to discuss the issues of life with HIV/AIDS, including widowhood and societal stigma. 

SWEP was lucky this week to be one of the vendors at Know Kenya More (KKM), a weeklong fundraising event put on by the Kenya Museum Society to support the National Museums of Kenya. Through a diverse collection of expert speakers, films, and outings, KKM gives individuals the chance to learn more about aspects of life in Kenya. KKM also features vendors from the Nairobi area throughout the week and gives them the opportunity to sell their products.

SWEP featured its crafts at KKM this week and gained much desired exposure. Two members of SWEP who worked at the table, Rose and Joan, were able to gain experience in marketing and took a lot of notes about how to both improve and expand SWEP’s products. It was a successful and fun venture and we thank KKM for this opportunity!

Rose and Joan, and some of the paper bead jewelry SWEP has made

Xiaoxi, Shining Hope's Manager of Strategic Partnerships, along with Rose, Joan, and Jessica, a Shining Hope fellow

President Clinton Invites Kennedy to Join Clinton Global Initiative

President Clinton has invited Kennedy Odede to join the Clinton Global Initiative, a community of global leaders dedicated to forging solutions to the world's most pressing challenges. By fostering partnerships, providing strategic advice, and driving resources toward effective ideas, the Clinton Global Initiative helps its members – organizations from the private sector, public sector, and civil society – maximize their efforts to alleviate poverty, create a cleaner environment, and increase access to health care and education.

This spring, Kennedy was invited to speak on a panel with President Clinton and Sean Penn at the closing plenary of the Clinton Global Initiative University (CGI U) Conference (if you missed the panel, watch it here!). CGI U brought together University students from all over the world to foster a community of young leaders who don't just discuss the world's challenges - they take real, concrete steps toward solving them. CGI U was inspired by President Clinton's main effort-- The Clinton Global Initiative (CGI), which he founded in 2005 in an effort to translate ideas into action.

The 2011 CGI Annual Meeting will take place Sept. 20-22 in New York City. The Annual Meeting  brings together heads of state, government and business leaders, scholars, and NGO directors. The participants will analyze pressing global challenges, discuss the most effective solutions, and build lasting partnerships that enable them to create positive social change. The Annual Meetings have brought together nearly 150 current and former heads of state, 18 Nobel Prize laureates, and hundreds of leading CEOs, along with heads of foundations, major philanthropists, directors of the most effective nongovernmental organizations, and prominent members of the media. These CGI members have made nearly 2,000 commitments, which have already improved the lives of 300 million people in more than 180 countries. When fully funded and implemented, these commitments will be valued in excess of $63 billion.

We are thrilled for Kennedy's participation in the CGI Conference this September and are excited for the opportunities that CGI will bring for Shining Hope's work!

‎"You know you've been a little modest here, but this is kind of a breakthrough in Kibera--what you're doing for young girls and women. It's a breakthrough that has to be done everywhere."

-President Bill Clinton to Kennedy (April 2011, CGI U Closing Plenary)

Dining for Women features Shining Hope for June program!

Shining Hope is the featured organization for Dining for Women's (DFW) June program! DFW is a dinner giving circle, where local chapters across the United States raise money each month for a featured organization. From their  website:

We “dine in” together once a month, each bringing a dish to share, and our “dining out” dollars (what we would have spent if we had eaten at a restaurant) are sent to programs empowering women worldwide. We then combine all donations from hundreds of chapters to support one carefully selected international program a month. We fund grass-roots programs in education, healthcare, vocational training, micro-credit loans and economic development. These programs are aimed to improve the living situations for women and their families, by providing the tools they need to make changes.

 Below is a photo of the Abington, PA chapter of DFW. The chapter leaders are Mary Liz Jones and Debbie Britt. Our board member Betsy Teutsch joined them for the evening-- we hear the food was delicious! 

Thank you Dining for Women!

Kennedy and President Clinton

We couldn't be more proud of CEO Kennedy Odede, who was featured on a panel with President Clinton and Sean Penn at the closing plenary of CGIU!

This was a conversation that you don't want to miss! Watch it here (beginning at 18:00). cgiu on livestream.com. Broadcast Live Free

Here are some of our favorite quotes from the session!

From President Clinton to Kennedy:

"...this is kind of a breakthrough in Kibera, what you're doing for young girls and women, it's a breakthrough that has to be done everywhere."

"why are you so moved by him? Well he's impressive he got out of this horrible slum, he's at Wesleyan. He gives a good speech, he's charismatic, but oh my God he still cares about all those people he left behind and he knows that a bunch of them could do what he's done if they just had the same set of chances. He sees them.

You think about all the people in the world today who are never seen...

I'm very grateful that there are people like Kennedy...who are helping."

From Kennedy!

"It's time for a revolution. It's not just Africa---it's everywhere. It's time to change the world."

"The ideas that you have can change the world."

At Shining Hope, we are thrilled to see how Kennedy's ideas really are changing the world, day by day. We too are grateful for people like Kennedy, who really "see" people.

March 24th was World TB Day!

Last week, the Johanna Justin-Jinich Clinic had the amazing opportunity to participate in a festival commemorating World Tuberculosis Day!

Along with other distinguished partners, including DREAM, Medicine Sans Frontier and the U.S. Center for Disease Control, Shining Hope and clinic staff marched through Kibera in a parade to spread awareness about this serious, but treatable, disease.

The parade concluded in Kamkunji, where performances, including a play and poem read by our community health workers, and speeches where staged for government representatives and the Kibera community. Information booths, VCT and TB testing sites were also set up at the event, encouraging everyone in attendance to know their status.

The event was a huge success and a major step for the clinic. Our fantastic new administrator, Angeline, is hard at work coordinating more special events and relationship for the clinic- keep up the good work!

Groundbreaking Study Released Today

Groundbreaking study released today: for every year of primary education that women receive the under 5 mortality rate drops 10%!

Groundbreaking findings are released today in a study in The Lancet. Researchers found that:

For every year of education that women in developing countries get the under five mortality rate drops 10%!

The mother’s education has a greater impact on child survival than economic household characteristics or increasing income.

Mother’s education is a more decisive influence than the education of the father.

The impact goes beyond just the children of an educated woman: the study found that children of poorly educated mothers are also less likely to die in areas where overall female educational attainment is higher.

Read the articles here:

http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(10)61417-1/ful...

http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(10)61257-3/ful...

Then follow us on twitter @hope2shine and become a fan on facebook!