Africa's Urban Challenge

Last week our CEO, Kennedy Odede, was featured in Project Syndicate, a publication that "brings original, engaging, and thought-provoking commentaries by esteemed leaders and thinkers from around the world to readers everywhere." In his article, Kennedy addresses the challenge of urbanization in Africa and around the world.

The story of moving to the city to look for opportunities is one Kenendy can personally relate to: 

My mother, like her mother, her grandmother, and so on, was born into poverty in the rural village of Rarieda, Kenya. I, too, was born in the village, and lived there until it was struck by a brutal famine when I was two years old. With no food, money, or opportunities, my mother did what thousands of African villagers do every day: she moved us to the city in search of a better life. But, given the lack of jobs and housing in Nairobi, we ended up in Kibera, one of Africa’s largest slums.

Slums are the reality for much of the developing world -- and they will not just go away. Currently, 78% of all urban-dwellers in the developing world live in cities. That number will only grow.  By 2050, only 30% of the world's population will remain in rural areas. The others will live in urban settings, and the majority in slums. 

This presents us with the choice to view slums as an unsolvable problem, or as an opportunity.  

Urban slums worldwide will soon reach a tipping point, with young people rejecting the lives that they have been offered ... Cities are not just Africa’s future; they are its present. Unless collective action is taken now to transform cities like Nairobi into the drivers of economic development and sources of opportunity that they are supposed to be, they will become a tinderbox of perpetual inequality.

Read Kennedy's entire piece here, and let us know what you think in the comments below, on Facebook, or on Twitter

Conversations with Mandela

I have never met Nelson Mandela, but we have had many conversations.

Our founder Kennedy discovered Nelson Mandela when he was a young boy living in Kibera. An American gave Kennedy Mandela's "A Long Walk to Freedom" and he couldn't put it down. Mandela's story of struggle gave him hope and inspiration.

Our lives in the slums seemed to take a friend every day. Police shot my friend Boi; they thought he looked like a criminal. My childhood friend Calvin hanged himself. His suicide note said what I felt: “I just can’t take it anymore.” Both of my sisters were raped and impregnated as teenagers. People seemed to fade and disappear. To live was the exception. I am now 29, and all but two of my closest childhood friends are dead.

It was Mandela who saved my life.

Kennedy's conversations covered triumph, tragedy, and everything in between. His  conversations with Mandela have continued to this day. 

I still talk to Mandela, and I wonder what he might do today. How he might organize another movement to take Africa forward. These are conversations we must all begin to have.

As we begin to anticipate his loss, so too we must celebrate the need for a next generation of selfless and driven leaders. For me, Mandela’s example will always stand as a reminder of what is possible when conviction faces injustice, of the work that still remains unfinished, and of the long road ahead.

Read all of Kennedy's piece here

Measuring (and growing!) Our Impact

This month, we are excited to be increasing our efficiency and social impact with our new and improved beneficiary ID scanning system at our sites! For the past nine months, we have been providing free SHOFCO ID cards to beneficiaries who use any or all of our services. The IDs feature a picture of the individual, along with a bar code that allows individuals to “Check-in” at any of our programs. Prior to developing this system, a beneficiary at our water tower had their information kept in paper records, separate from the records kept at our clinic, library, cyber café, economic empowerment groups, or in any other program within SHOFCO.

Our librarian, David, scans in community members when they visit our library

Our librarian, David, scans in community members when they visit our library

For the past nine months, our Metrics & Evaluation team has been working tirelessly to register all of our many program users – anybody who participates in our clinic, water tower, youth programs, Group Savings and Loans programs, and, of course, The Kibera School for Girls. To date, we’ve registered over 6,000 beneficiaries and their roughly 24,000 family members, with more being registered every day.

We’ve asked our beneficiaries questions ranging from how old they were when they had their first child to who in their family has the most control over education decisions for their children, and we will ask them again in later years to see how their living conditions and social norms have changed through use of each of our programs. By registering our beneficiaries, we’re able to determine important, detailed demographic information of the population we work with – their ages, genders, level of education, income, employment status, and more – and determine how our programs make a positive impact on these important factors in our beneficiaries’ lives. Registration will also make our service more accessible and efficient for our beneficiaries, saving them time and providing them with a better quality, individually tailored service.

Today, a woman arrives at our water tower to purchase safe drinking water from our SHOFCO Clean Water Kiosk and has her new SHOFCO ID card scanned. If she uses our health clinic to receive treatment for an illness, an electronic record from her visit will be made. If she then visits our Community Programs and joins our Economic Empowerment program in a Group Savings and Loans (GS&L) group, she will sign in using her SHOFCO ID . Every time she returns to the clinic for a check-up or attends a GS&L meeting or gets clean water from our water tower, an electronic record of her visit will be made. 

In our new system, every time she scans in, her records are pushed directly into our new Salesforce platform. This online database, which we’ve built with the team from Vera Solutions, helps us streamline our daily operations while providing us with in-depth data that will allow us to evaluate our programs’ short, medium, and long-term impact and efficiency.

John Paul, left, and Johnson, right, have spearheaded the registration process over the past 6 months.

John Paul, left, and Johnson, right, have spearheaded the registration process over the past 6 months.

Over time, we can use this data – collected across 1000s of beneficiaries – to improve the services we provide to the Kibera community. Along with the community input and support that has always dictated how, when, and where we develop our programs, this data can be a vital resource that informs how we should adapt or expand our programs to better serve the people of Kibera. 

SHOFCO-Oberlin Semester Update

SHOFCOberlin has a lot going on this semester! Thus far we've been doing a lot of planning for events that will be happening in late April and May as well as some smaller fundraising events. We had a table selling SWEP jewelry and bags at both a fashion show run by the African Students Organization and an annual community market attended mostly by local artisans from the city of Oberlin. We raised a lot of money at both of those fundraising events and are hoping to work a lot more with those groups in the future. 

As for the rest of the semester, we have "Girl Power" themed night at our dance club/discotheque. Students will pay for entry and get to dance to some awesome music including SHOFCOberlin's personal favorite: Beyoncé. All of the proceeds will go towards helping us plan future events as well as to the Shining Hope organization. 

In a couple weeks we'll be screening Girl Rising (the documentary by the organization 10x10), and will around the same time have a roundtable discussion about international aid/volunteering, nonprofit work, and girls' education. We've invited several other student organizations with similar interests and goals as well as several teachers whose specialties could add an interesting dynamic to the discussion.

We are also planning on setting up an exhibit in our library of photographs from around SHOFCO as well as several pieces from the Ghetto Mirror, poems by the girls, videos, the Slum Tourism article written by Kennedy, and the annual report. We'll make this as interactive as possible to get the school thinking about the various aspects of SHOFCO, KSG, and Kibera.

Finally, we have two longer-term projects that we have been planning this semester. First we are planning on setting up a video pen-pal program between the after-school girls of KSG and "Girls in Motion," an after-school program for girls to start thinking about physical fitness and self-respect. Second, we are going to have an "article swap" in which Oberlin's school newspaper, the Oberlin Review, will print an article written by the Ghetto Mirror. 

That's all we have, and it's keeping us busy!

 

Kennedy with SHOFCOberlin after speaking at a talk organized by the group.

Kennedy with SHOFCOberlin after speaking at a talk organized by the group.

Are you a college student hoping to bring the SHOFCO movement to your campus? Get in touch with us by emailing Nathan at Nathan@shininghopeforcommunities.org. He’ll help you get the club started and put you in touch with student leaders on other campuses like Oberlin!

Valentine's Day Singing Grams, Thai Food, Live Music, Yoga, Dunk Tanks: SHOFCO-Wesleyan Sends in Semester Update

We recently asked our Wesleyan University college chapter, SHOFCO-Wesleyan, what they've been up to this semester. Turns out: a ton. Here's what they wrote in to tell us:

SHOFCO-Wes has been up to a lot this semester.

We started out the semester with a collaboration with the African Student Association and the Wesleyan Chapter of Half The Sky in screening the film: To Educate A Girl. We also collaborated with four different acapella groups during Valentine's Day Weekend for our Singing-Grams event (which fundraised a solid amount of money for our overall fundraising goal for the 4th grade classroom). We also collaborated with the Caribbean Student Association and had a table at their fair in March. 

 We've been doing a lot of planning for a couple of events that are coming up these next few weeks. Since it is WesFest this week, we are having a fundraiser at a local restaurant (Typhoon) where 10% of the proceeds from lunch and dinner (starting Wednesday until Saturday) will be going towards SHOFCO. Also, we are participating in the Student Activities Fair tomorrow with a booth outside, and are running a WeSeminar on SHOFCO and Social Entrepreneurship tomorrow from 12-2pm in PAC001. We are also collaborating with WesBAM (formerly known as WesWell) for a SHOFCO Yoga event on the hill from 4:30 onwards tomorrow as well. 

 Next week, on April 27th (a Saturday) we're having an all day concert/festival (called SHOFCOchella). This basically entails a festival from 12-5 with music, a DUNK TANK (all our dreams are finally coming true there), and food for sale in the backyard of Psi U (a fraternity we're collaborating with). Then, from 10 pm-1:30 am we're having a ticketed concert inside of Psi U, featuring The Rooks, Josh Smith & The Riot Act, and E. Oks.  

We've also been designing and are now about to produce SHOFCO Bro Tanks that will be for sale on campus until the end of the semester. Along with this, we're also planning a photo exhibit (tentatively to be called something like: A Day in the Life of a Girl) for Reunion and Commencement here at Wesleyan (in the student-run cafe, called Espwesso). 

Concurrent with all of these projects, we've also been doing a weekly Girl of the Week at our meetings, along with an Audio reading project led by Holly Everett where students read children's books and record the audio of their readings so that it may be sent to the girls."

These guys have been busy! And as if that wasn't impressive enough, they're already thinking ahead to next year:

We've also been planning a Variety Show and a Dance-a-thon for the beginning of next year.

Amazing -- can't wait!

SHOFCO-Wes chapter leaders brainstorm during a group meeting.

SHOFCO-Wes chapter leaders brainstorm during a group meeting.

Thanks to SHOFCO-Wes for an event-packed semester! Keep an eye out for updates from another one of our college chapters, SHOFCO-Oberlin, coming soon!

Want to start a chapter on your campus? Awesome! Email Nathan at nathan@shininghopeforcommunties.org to get started and to be put in touch with other chapter leaders!

"Changing the World, One Cup at a Time"

At the start of January, our CEO and co-founder Kennedy Odede received an email from a class of 8th graders from The Banner School in Frederick, MD. The class had watched the Senior Class Address he gave at his graduation from Wesleyan University in May, 2012, and were inspired to do something to help. They wrote in their email, “My teacher has shown your speech to all the classes she teaches. She says you are an example of how one person can make a difference.” They said they wanted to make a difference by holding a fundraiser for Shining Hope. 

The class leapt to action, organizing a fundraiser through their class business, One World Coffeehouse. The Coffeehouse is student-operated and donates to a different organization every month, running under the incredible motto: “Changing the World, One Cup at a Time.” At the end of January, they held an extremely successful event “staffed” by the students. They were able to share with family and friends about Shining Hope for Communities and the Kibera School for Girls, and donated all the funds they raised to support our movement. We can’t thank them enough!

We’re very moved, impressed, and inspired by these young people and future leaders. They’re an amazing example of how a group of people can come together to make a positive difference in this world of ours!

Have an idea for your own creative way to support the Kibera School for Girls -- or any of our projects at Shining Hope -- by holding an event at your school, church, synogogue, workplace or neighborhood? Just get in touch with Nathan at nathan@shininghopeforcommunities.org and we'll do all we can to help make it a huge success!

World AIDS Day

The theme of World AIDS Day this year, held annually on December 1st, was “Getting to Zero” which came from UNAIDS vision of “Zero new HIV infections. Zero discrimination. Zero AIDS-related deaths.” The Kenya World AIDS Day event was held in Kisumu but the Ministry of Health also organized an event for Nairobi held in town. The event started in Uhuru Park where attendees gathered to walk together to the main venue. The aim of the event was to raise awareness about HIV/AIDS, while setting a goal to bring HIV infection down to zero.

Community Health Workers from Shining Hope attended the event and were impressed by the turnout. People from all over Nairobi were present, with many large organizations in attendance. Skits were performed and poems were read, all related to how important it is to protect yourselves and your partners from HIV/AIDS. Government officials made speeches, sending an important message to all who were there: it is our responsibility to protect ourselves from HIV, to know our own and our partners’ status, and to take care not to infect other people.

It is important to continue creating awareness about HIV and to share practical information about HIV prevention. In 2010, UNAIDS reported that 1.5 million in Kenya are living with HIV with an annual infection rate of around 100,000*. Shining Hope CHWs felt strongly about attending the event, as HIV is something they frequently deal with in Kibera and want to continue educating people about. Shining Hope runs an HIV/AIDS support group, the Post-Test Club, whose members also attended the World AIDS Day event. Head CHW, Maggie, said the people in the Post-Test Club were excited about an event targeting HIV/AIDS and it was empowering for them to see how many people were there.

The event was a success and inspired the CHWs to hold their own World AIDS Day event next year in Kibera!

People march from Uhuru Park for World AIDS Day

http://www.coastweek.com/3448_hivday_01.htm 

*http://www.uonbi.ac.ke/node/348