Givology - give to learn, learn to give

Shining Hope for Communities founded the Kibera School for Girls in 2009. The Kibera School for Girls provides a superior education, daily nourishment, uniforms, healthcare, and school supplies all free of charge to Kibera’s brightest and most at-risk girls. The school also provides students with after-school programs and psychosocial support to prevent further rape and abuse and to address trauma. Run by a staff of female teachers from Kibera, the school gives students and community-members positive female role models. The Kibera School for Girls currently serves 67 students in pre-K through 2nd grade.

The daily feeding program ensures that our students and staff are receiving a nutritious breakfast, lunch, and snack at school. For $375 per month, we can feed 67 students and the 30-person staff of our school and health clinic in Kibera. Proper nourishment is instrumental for academic success, but our students are lucky if they receive even one full meal at home each day. The feeding program is key to our school’s effectiveness.

At our pilot site, Kenya’s Kibera slum, the UN estimates that as many as 1.5 million people live in the informal settlement. However, Kenya’s government does not formally acknowledge the slum’s existence. The government contends that Kibera’s residents are illegally squatting on government-owned land and thus refuses to provide any services or infrastructure to Kibera residents such as toilets, roads, hospitals, or schools. The lack of accessible resources or services hurts everyone, but leaves women devastated because men are in control of any existing resources.

Kennedy Odede is the co-founder and Executive Director of Shining Hope for Communities. Kennedy lived in the Kibera slum of Nairobi, Kenya for 23 of his 25 years. There, he saw the bleak prospects for women first-hand. Kennedy’s father abused his mother, Jane, and kept the family hungry, spending what little money they had on alcohol. Subsequently, Jane taught Kennedy about gender equality. The eldest in a family of eight, Kennedy sold peanuts on the road starting at age seven to put himself and his siblings through school. Despite his efforts, two of Kennedy’s sisters had to drop out after becoming teenage mothers—one impregnated as the result of a gang rape. After seeing many women’s lives crushed like those of his mother and sisters’, Kennedy dreamed of finding a way to change the position of women in his society.

The first time Kennedy ever had extra money—20 cents in 2005—he bought a soccer ball and started the first youth group in Kibera founded and run by slum residents. He ran this group for 4 years with no funding. Through his faith in people’s abilities to change their own lives, he expanded this group into one of the largest organizations in the slum, working with 3,000+ people on AIDS education, female empowerment, microfinance, sanitation, and community health work. Because of this work, Kennedy is often called the “mayor of Kibera.” Kennedy combines his intimate understanding of Kibera’s daily challenges with the skills he is gaining through an education at Wesleyan University. As one of very few people from Kibera to attend an accredited four-year college, Kennedy knows what it takes to get out of poverty, and what is needed to transform his community.

In 2007, Kennedy met Jessica Posner when she was a junior at Wesleyan University studying abroad in Nairobi. Jessica worked with SHOFCO on a theatre project in Kibera and became the first white person in living memory to actually live inside the slum itself. Jessica was also moved by the struggles facing the Kibera community, especially the plight of women and girls. After living and working in Kibera, Jessica knew she wanted a meaningful role in this community. When political violence erupted in Kenya in December 2007, Kennedy was at risk because of his reputation as a powerful community leader. Back in the United Sates, Jessica helped him escape to Tanzania, and then encouraged Kennedy to apply to Wesleyan as he had always talked about his own dreams of getting a college education. After Kennedy was accepted to Wesleyan, Jessica returned in the summer of 2008 to create another play with residents from all ethnic groups about Kenya’s post-election violence, sparking a community-wide movement toward reconciliation and internal reform. At Wesleyan together in the fall of 2008, Jessica and Kennedy began to work together to make our dream of changing the options available to women a reality. In 2009 we co-founded The Kibera School for Girls and Shining Hope for Communities.

In Kenya, 33% of women trade sex to survive by 16; in Kibera 66% of girls trade sex for food as early as age six. Women in Kibera contract HIV at a rate 5 times their male counterparts; Kibera has one of the world’s highest HIV rates. Only 8% of women in Kibera ever attend school. One of 5 children do not live to see their 5th birthday. Seven of 10 women have or will experience violence. Our model will change these devastating realities. Educating a girl in places like Kibera means she will earn more and invest 90% of earnings in her family, be three times less likely to contract HIV, and have fewer, healthier children more likely to live past age five.

Shining Hope for Communities developed an innovative, two-step community-driven model to combat gender inequality. We link free schools for girls to holistic community centers that provide residents with the most essential services unavailable elsewhere. However, simply providing accessible education is not enough to change the value society places on women. The second step of our model provides the community-at-large with desperately needed services including a health clinic, library, job training, and economic development. The tangible link between a school for girls and desperately needed community services for all creates a unique social incentive structure, as the community learns to associate desperately needed services with an institution dedicated to girls' education, increasing the value placed on women.

Shining Hope has had widespread impact and support. Already we have provided community-run infrastructure such as a free school for girls, a health clinic, sanitary toilets, water, gardens, gender violence support groups, microenterprise for HIV positive women, literacy/computer training, and hundreds of jobs. Our impact has mitigated local deficits in education, sanitation, health, food security, and technological job skills. Kennedy and Jessica were recently awarded the prestigious 2010 Echoing Green Fellowship given to the world’s best emerging social entrepreneurs. They have received support for their work from The Newman’s Own Foundation, and Shining Hope also won the international 2010 Dell Social Innovation Competition. Jessica was recently recognized as America’s “Top World CShining Hope has had widespread impact and support. Already we have provided community-run infrastructure such as a free school for girls, a health clinic, sanitary toilets, water, gardens, gender violence support groups, microenterprise for HIV positive women, literacy/computer training, and hundreds of jobs. Our impact has mitigated local deficits in education, sanitation, health, food security, and technological job skills. Kennedy and Jessica were recently awarded the prestigious 2010 Echoing Green Fellowship given to the world’s best emerging social entrepreneurs. They have received support for their work from The Newman’s Own Foundation, and Shining Hope also won the international 2010 Dell Social Innovation Competition. Jessica was recently recognized as America’s “Top World Changer 25 and Under” by Do Something and VH1. Our students, staff and community members are leading the way to a better tomorrow for themselves, their families, their community—and for all of us.