Forbes honored Kennedy, naming him as one of their "30 Under 30: Social Entrepreneurs" for his amazing achievement and apparent promise!
Congratulations, Kennedy!
Kennedy Pens New York Times Op-ed: "Terrorism's Fertile Ground"
“Given the link between urban poverty and terrorism, the best strategy is to fight poverty, not terrorism…The war on terror can be won only through education, promise and real opportunities.”
Read Kennedy's thought-provoking op-ed, "Terrorism's Fertile Ground", published in the New York Times today!
In response to recent news that suggests slums are breeding grounds for terrorist recruitment, Kennedy argues that giving hope to the most vulnerable is the key solution.
Building a Better Kibera
On Tuesday, at the Clinton Global Initiative's (CGI) 2013 Annual Meeting, Chelsea Clinton, (who visited SHOFCO last year!) made an exciting announcement with Jessica and Kennedy by her side: CGI is building a partnership around our work, bringing together companies to take on different pieces of what we do and invest in our growth!
CGI's 2013 theme is Mobilizing For Impact. The initiative explores how CGI affiliates can increase effectiveness in leveraging individuals, partners, and resources. The concept is that mobilizing the right entities—and allowing them to reach their full potential—creates lasting and scalable success.
“That’s what we’re going to focus on this year, how we can get people together more—have more effective teams to have a bigger impact”
At the core of CGI is an emphasis on commitments, and at SHOFCO, we are determined to fulfill ours! The charge behind this commitment was lead by the Starkey Hearing Foundation, who has committed to building hearing health infrastructure at our clinic, and bolstering our health programs. Pentair, our new corporate partner, and global water systems leader, has committed $250,000 to double our water infrastructure and will dedicate a team of expert engineers to our project!
Now, CGI is looking to add companies around the other segments of our work as part of a commitment to SHOFCO called “Build a Better Kibera.” We look forward to expanding our support network!
“We are grateful for how our partners have mobilized around Shining Hope for Communities. Pentair’s commitment to action will help double the number of Kibera residents who have access to clean drinking water, while enabling Shining Hope for Communities to reach its full potential.”
“The idea behind coming to Kibera was to really listen to the community and find out what those needs are, and utilize our network and our partners to help make a greater impact.”
To all of our supporters--thank you for tuning in and thank you for your continued partnership!
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.”
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
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.
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.
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!