Posts Tagged ‘East Africa’

We Are Watching You – Political Accountability through Civic Participation

Wednesday, May 9th, 2012

We Are Watching You is a campaign to create political accountability in Kenya by increasing citizens’ vigilance and civic participation. The campaign uses elements of popular culture to sensitize citizens and works in collaboration with civil society leaders. Created in the wake of the 2007-2008 post-election violence in Kenya, it is led by Ramadhan Obiero – an Acumen Fund East Africa Fellow. Ramadhan has experience as the Coordinator for the Vumilia Youth Group, the Stage Manager for musician Eric Wainaina, the leader of the Kale Leo Band, and the Chairman of the African Cultural Research and Education Foundation.

Acumen Fund launched the East Africa Fellows program to identify and train the next generation of leaders united by a common mission of harnessing the power of social innovation to create solutions to East Africa’s most pressing problems. The Acumen Fund East Africa Fellows Program is made possible through the sponsorship of KCB Foundation and the Edmond de Rothschild Foundations.

A View from East Africa: Transcendence

Friday, March 2nd, 2012

Acumen Fund launched the East Africa Fellows program to identify and train the next generation of leaders united by a common mission of harnessing the power of social innovation to create solutions to East Africa’s most pressing problems.

We received over 500 applications from the East Africa region in response to our call. Each of the 19 Fellows we selected for this inaugural class has a unique approach to solving problems in the region. We have invited each of our fellows to share their story and social change projects in a blog series titled “A View from East Africa.”

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Eight months ago during the first Acumen Fund East Africa Fellows seminar, Jacqueline Novogratz, Acumen Fund’s CEO, asked the Fellows if and when we had ever “transcended our current state of being”. I immediately challenged Jacqueline, questioning the relevance of the inquiry and answering her, emphatically, that I personally had never transcended anything. I wondered where she was trying to go with the debate and soon assured myself that this part of the discussion was irrelevant to my work or life.

Last week, during the last Fellows seminar on operational skills, the we were treated to a sequence of star speakers, including Sunny Bindra, Dr. Robert Ochola and Farah Pandith, Special Representative to Hilary Clinton. However, the weekend kicked off with the IDEO.org team introducing us to design thinking. Part of the assignment was to experience a way to find solutions to problems through a process that included deep listening sessions. We were divided in groups, and using IDEO’s method of Human-Centered Design, we completed a two day exercise of field work. Each group was split up based on sector and given a particular challenge at the BoP to tackle – the health group I was in came up with an affordable children’s mobile clinic.

IDEO.org's design thinking seminar at work

At the end of the session members of the Baba Dogo community, an area outside of Nairobi where residents typically live on less than 2 USD a day, joined us to provide feedback on our work. The group I was in interviewed several families in the community, and our last stop was at a room in a rundown building a few meters away from the ACREF ( African Culture Research and Education Foundation) headquarters. Entering the room we were welcomed by Amata, the single mother of Felix, an 18 year old mentally and physically disabled young man. The typical participants in our interviews were women and children without basic services, something we are well aware of. Our last interviewee was no different, but while sitting in her sofa and looking at this young man that couldn’t talk or sit on his own, and required special care unavailable for him, ‘transcendence’ happened to me.

With my basic Swahili I could not understand the words and only by observing the way this mother talked, held her son’s hands, was I able to fully comprehend her pain, frustration and anger. For a few minutes I felt the urgent need to hug her and her son, and an emotional connection was created beyond language and nationality. I was, there and then, transcending. As If I was just a pawn in Jacqueline’s master plan of creating an army of moral leaders, I felt naively manipulated. Eight months before, Jacqueline knew something I didn’t – that this connection is what binds us and makes our work as social entrepreneurs unique, relevant and critical in building our moral imagination.

Understanding this, I was reenergized to go back to work, refocused on the goals I want to achieve, and morally refreshed knowing that I have a promising and challenging path ahead of me. Soon after my experience in Baba Dogo I came to these simple but matter of fact conclusions: Why are we doing this work? Because we MUST! Our generation has the knowledge, the drive  and the moral obligation to change. Change what? To protect our environment, solve the energy crisis, ensure every person has access to a proper education, decent housing, basic services and an adequate health system. And finally – how? By transforming the traditional aid model, putting social entrepreneurship in the global agenda, treating the poor as equals and providing them with opportunities and jobs.

Julio is the Chief Operating Officer of Nuru Energy, a social enterprise that produces and distributes low-cost lanterns that are rechargeable through pedal generators. Nuru Energy has 12,000 light units sold in East Africa, and aims to reach five million lights sold by 2015. Julio has worked a Program Manager with the UNDP in Kenya on private sector development. He holds a Master’s Degree in International Development from the University of Oslo, as well as a Bachelor’s Degree in International Studies and Economics from California State University.

The Acumen Fund East Africa Fellows Program is made possible through the sponsorship of KCB Foundation and the Edmond de Rothschild Foundations.

A View from East Africa: Living in a Shanty Town – Breaking the Poverty Cycle

Wednesday, January 25th, 2012

A section of Kibera; the white high rise afar is the decanting site for KENSUP

Acumen Fund launched the East Africa Fellows program to identify and train the next generation of leaders united by a common mission of harnessing the power of social innovation to create solutions to East Africa’s most pressing problems.

We received over 500 applications from the East Africa region in response to our call. Each of the 19 Fellows we selected for this inaugural class has a unique approach to solving problems in the region. We have invited each of our fellows to share their story and social change projects in a new blog series titled “A View from East Africa.”

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I once wrote an article in a community journal titled “Living in A Shanty Town,” which was a letter to the Kenya Slum Upgrading Program (KENSUP). KENSUP was set up in 2001, an inception inspired by Millennium Development Goal 7(d): “Improving the lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers by 2020.” I was one of the beneficiaries of the program, which I guess would classify me as a “slum dweller” (I so hate the term).  I am a resident of Kibera, one of East Africa’s largest slums, a Soweto East resident, and my structure was identified by the program as KSE/B/389/2. My article was basically an open letter seeking to give a slum dweller’s concerns to the upgrading project not captured in the plan.

In my open letter to the slum upgrading project, I pointed out that slum upgrading might not be the best way to improve the lives of the slum dweller, and that the proposed plan would essentially drive people to other slums. The proposed high rises were high cost and most people could not afford to pay for them, upfront or through the Co-operatives formed for that purpose. It also threatened to disrupt a community ecosystem – slum upgrading and low cost housing are not synonymous. When my friend called to inform me that the demolition had begun, we took a few minutes to reminisce on the only home we had ever known, and we were under no illusion that we could afford to come back.

A friend of mine read the article and suggested I should run it as a column; I am not much of a writer so I didn’t follow through with it, but when I was coming up with a name for my social change project as an Acumen Fund East Africa Fellow, I thought Living In A Shanty Town (L.I.S.T) was an okay name. I also found the name and my desire to work in a slum a bit disturbing. As a young girl, I badly wanted out. I used to keep a journal and most of the entries scream an urgent and desperate desire to get out of the slum. One of the entries reads as follows: “Every single day as I walk to school through the dirt littered paths, filled with brackish water, I long for the day I would move and erase every trace that I was ever here.” I wanted to be a lawyer – I worked hard and against all odds all managed to get through law school.

A couple of months after graduation, I attended a burial of a guy I grew up with, played house with and schooled with. He had been gunned down as a suspected criminal,  just like a dozen of my other friends. I think in my determination to get out, I had lost touch; but the sudden realization that I had lost almost every guy I grew up with triggered a deep desire within me to work with young people in my ‘hood and to get similar ‘hoods to just work together and figure out a way of getting out of the slum without us dying in the process.

This served as the inspiration behind L.I.S.T. My vision and that of the team is to convene a grassroots movement of empowered youths who can initiate personal, economic, political and social change in slums. I have always felt the story of our team captures what L.I.S.T. is all about better. For most of us, through no fault of our own, we find ourselves trapped in a poverty cycle and living in a shanty town does not help. L.I.S.T is us coming together and working toward breaking the poverty cycle and reaching out for help – to do that, we don’t need charity – we need a fighting chance.

Pauline sitting on the railway - it's quite symbolic in Kibera.

L.I.S.T. has three main Action Points: Youth Economic Empowerment, Education and Governance, with a key focus on Youth Economic Empowerment; we seek to ensure that young people from slums have the will, appropriate skills, capabilities, resources and access to a secure and sustainable income and livelihood. The idea was to work with what the young people are already engaged in – small business – with the aim of scaling it up, equipping them with knowledge of market dynamics, skills such as credit facilities, and trying to aggregate their business at certain key points, for instance at the point of buying or selling. The big picture is to enable these young people to earn income, create wealth and break from the poverty cycle.

The model we are trying out is called bizna mtaani ( street business), which involves modeling some business training relevant to the businesses young people are already conducting in the streets, to ensure the training meets their specific needs. It involves sessions in which they get a chance to speak about themselves, their experiences in the slum, of their dreams and aspirations, why they are doing the business, how they are doing, and we identify the gaps that call for training or more information to enhance their capabilities to make the right decisions and seize opportunities. We also connect them with other institutions that work with young people in providing credit and business mentorship.

The story telling session is key: the day to day struggle to earn a living and maintain a sense of dignity and self worth in the face of so much poverty wears down most of the young people in shanty towns, sapping their morale and talent. The sessions bring in some optimism and energy to give life yet another chance. The tens of youth empowerment programs that most have already been a part of didn’t have a real impact in their lives; a promise that things will be better just won’t do, they need to see the promise happening. Through L.I.S.T, we want to create a platform for slum residents, and especially youths, to champion their own causes and work toward change that is significant to them.

Pauline Wanja is an Acumen Fund East Africa Fellow in the Class of 2011-12. Pauline is the convener of  Living in a Shanty Town (LIST), a grassroots movement which aims at unifying young people from slums and availing them with a platform to work together to break the poverty cycle. She also helps implement a youth empowerment project at Action Aid.

The Acumen Fund East Africa Fellows Program is made possible through the sponsorship of KCB Foundation and the Edmond de Rothschild Foundations.

A View from East Africa: Being the change that I wish to see in the world

Wednesday, January 11th, 2012

Acumen Fund launched the East Africa Fellows program to identify and train the next generation of leaders united by a common mission of harnessing the power of social innovation to create solutions to East Africa’s most pressing problems.

We received over 500 applications from the East Africa region in response to our call for applications. Each of the 19 Fellows we selected for this inaugural class has a unique approach to solving problems in the region. We are launching a new blog series titled “A View from East Africa” where we have invited each of our fellows to share their story and social change projects.

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As I think about the year that has just gone by, I am filled with immense gratitude for all that I experienced in 2011.  In many ways, 2011 was a life changing year for me. Most importantly, it was the year that my work with “We the Change” Foundation, in the field of early childhood education and care in Kenya, started in earnest.  Mahatma Gandhi once said that “we must be the change that we wish to see in the world” and ever since I first heard these words, they have strongly influenced me and the choices that I have made in my life. So much so, that I named the foundation with Gandhi’s quote in mind.

Starting in January, “We the Change” really took off. It was the culmination of a long personal voyage of discovery, transformation and deep introspection. In the wake of the post-election violence that rocked Kenya in 2007/2008, I quit my job as a lawyer working in London and travelled to Kenya, where I was born. My goal was two-fold.  Firstly, to get to know and to reacquaint myself with the country that I called home;’ secondly, I was determined to find a meaningful way in which to give back to communities in my country that lacked opportunity.

I had sat at my desk in London, watching the devastation unfold on my computer screen and could not believe what I was witnessing. My fellow countrymen were killing and harming each other in ways that I previously could not have fathomed. Like many other Kenyans at the time, I found myself confused and perplexed at just how something this terrible could have happened. Question after question flooded my mind. Where was the hatred coming from? Why were communities that had previously lived in harmony now killing each other? Why were those in power not doing anything to stop the violence? I found myself looking to those in authority for answers. However, it was ordinary Kenyans who provided inspiration.

One by one, I heard stories about my fellow Kenyans who were taking action and doing what they could to help. There were the Kenyan students living in America who raised money through concerts, parties and comedy shows.  There was the group of concerned Kenyan citizens who came from a cross section of society and who met every other day to co-ordinate relief efforts and to disseminate information. There was the Kenyan photographer who risked his life to document the violence, and who later used his photographs to promote peace.

Story by story, I was inspired and moved into action. Rather than looking to other people, I realised that I needed to look within and question myself about what my response was going to be. I had always talked about the importance of Gandhi’s words and what they had meant to me, but now the time had come to “walk my talk.” To an outsider, it might have seemed somewhat baffling at first. That I would be willing to give up my life and career in London in order to ‘return’ to a country that I hadn’t lived in for over 20 years.  However, to me, it made perfect sense. I have often described the pull that I felt then as an inexplicable inner-knowledge that this was the right (and indeed the only) path for me.

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When I first returned to Kenya, I visited camps for internally displaced people, spent time with prisoners in a number of Kenya’s prisons, and got to know (and ultimately became friends with) various incredibly inspiring people living in some of Africa’s largest urban slums. These profound experiences shaped my thoughts and transformed my previously conceived ideas about how best to be of service to the very communities that I was trying to help.  As it was the post-election violence that precipitated my return to Kenya, I had initially thought that I would get involved in peace and reconciliation activities. However, as I spent more time in Nairobi’s urban slums (Mathare slum in particular) I couldn’t help but notice  and be concerned by the hundreds of  very young children that I saw running around unsupervised on a daily basis.

Most of these children (many of whom live on less than the proverbial “2 dollars a day”) are either orphans or come from one-parent families.  Their primary care givers are unable to afford childcare or to send them to pre-school.  Primary school education in Kenya is free, however pre-school education is not. This means that many young children, below the age of six and who live in marginalised communities, are forced to fend for themselves whilst their caregivers go to work each day.

The first few years of a child’s life are critical in terms of human development. Growing up in a stable environment and being properly cared for will mean that a child is more likely to fully develop his or her thinking, language, emotional and social skills, and to suffer less from disease. Having received this kind of support, a child is then able to take these valuable foundations with them when they start primary school. Whilst the years after early childhood are bound to be fraught with difficulty for many children living in marginalised communities, their journeys in life would be that much harder (if not nearly impossible) without a good and solid start in life.

A recent article written by Nicholas Kristof in The New York Times references a policy statement issued by the American Academy of Pediatrics which states that: “Protecting young children from adversity is a promising, science-based strategy to address many of the most persistent and costly problems facing contemporary society, including limited educational achievement, diminished economic productivity, criminality, and disparities in health.” For children growing up in extreme poverty and deprivation, solid foundations in early childhood are very rarely developed. Many young children living in such environments are exposed to multiple risks, including poverty, malnutrition and poor health, all of which detrimentally affect their cognitive, motor, and social-emotional development.

As I got to know some of the young children in Mathare I started thinking about ways in which to address the issue of providing good quality early childhood education and care to children living in this community. I started thinking about just how inspiring and empowering it would be to create a centre for excellence in this field,  to have the centre  based in Kenya and to have it serve those most in need.  So this is exactly what I have set out to achieve.

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“We the Change” currently supports 30 children between the ages of 2 and 7 in our pilot program in Mathare. However, our aim is to create a centre for excellence that will comprise of two model schools (one in Mathare and the second in a rural dry land setting). The model schools will be backed up by a dedicated teacher training and research centre based at one of the top universities in Kenya (Kenyatta University).  The urban slums and the rural dry land areas are where the most marginalised communities in Kenya live. Although there are many similarities between these two communities, it is critical for their different needs to be taken into account when designing and developing an education program. This is why we plan to have a model school in each community. Our ultimate aim is to develop a model school system that can be replicated both nationally and then later, throughout the rest of Africa.

Rather tragically, early childhood education and care is traditionally not given much attention globally by education policy makers in various governments. Therefore, it is also my hope that through this work we will be able to raise awareness about the importance of education in this field and to transform education policy where we can. A report produced by the Centre on the Developing Child at Harvard University outlines the potential benefits of investing in early childhood education by explaining that, “extensive analysis by economists has shown that education and development investments in the earliest years of life produce the greatest returns. Most of those returns, which can range from $3 to $16 per dollar invested, benefit the community through reduced crime, welfare, and educational remediation, as well as increased tax revenues on higher incomes for the participants of early childhood programs when they reach adulthood.”

It is my hope that, by providing young children in Kenya with good quality pre-school education, we will help to alter their life trajectories and to provide them with opportunities that would otherwise have eluded them. As a girl born in Kenya over 30 years ago, I am acutely aware of the fact that my life trajectory would have been very different without the healthcare and educational opportunities that were given to me in early childhood and beyond. In fact, without the opportunities given to me by my parents, it is unlikely that I would have made it past my 5th birthday. I believe wholeheartedly in the notion of the “accident of birth” and in my mind, all that separates my 4 year old self and Mary (a 4 year old girl in our program in Mathare) is this concept. Given that I was born who I am and given the opportunities in life that were available to me, Gandhi’s words take on a much deeper meaning. When I read them, I am reminded about my role in this world and the sense of personal responsibility that I feel on a daily basis to do all that I can to play my part as a member of our global community.  As Robert Kennedy said: “Few will have the greatness to bend history itself, but each of us can work to change a small portion of events. It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centres of energy and daring those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.”

Soiya is an Acumen Fund East Africa Fellow in the Class of 2011-12. She is the Founder and Executive Director of “We The Change” Foundation, which seeks to provide early childhood education and care to children in marginalized communities. She holds an MA in Modern History from the University of St. Andrews and holds a Diploma of Law and a Postgraduate Diploma in Legal Practice from the College of Law in London. You can follow her and “We the Change” on Twitter @soiya and @wethechange2010, or on Facebook.

The Acumen Fund East Africa Fellows Program is made possible through the sponsorship of KCB Foundation and the Edmond de Rothschild Foundations.

Notes from East Africa: No More Time Outs from Poverty

Tuesday, November 8th, 2011

Sometime last year, a friend invited me to one of Jacqueline Novogratz’s talks in Kibera, one of Africa’s largest slums. He described her as a cool woman who had written a book on poverty. I declined the invite.

I was so broke, and feeling so poor that I was not ready to have yet another author come tell me what poverty is like.  He later offered me a copy of The Blue Sweater, which despite my love for books, I refused to read. I was in a place where just any book on poverty wouldn’t do, unless it was a certified manual on how to get out of it.

Weeks later, I was sitting in a friend’s office and there on the table I saw The Blue Sweater. I picked it up to pass the time, but it took only a few minutes to realize I was wrong about the book and the author. I read it earnestly, and reflected on its wisdom. One quote in particular stuck out to me: “Poverty won’t let you to raise your head, but dignity won’t let you bow it either.”

This was the second time I had an “Aha moment” due to the word dignity. This time around it was much deeper; it was dignity in relation to poverty, something I could relate to just too well. I noted the quote in my journal, appended it to my email signature and promised myself two things: first, that I would live by this mantra, and second, that I would one day meet this woman, give her a hug, and apologize for blowing off a chance to meet her in Kibera.

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Later I learned about the Acumen Fund East Africa Fellows Program. The Program is a platform to actualize dreams of building a better East Africa through investing in a new type of leader. While I am usually reserved and shy, I thought that if I linked myself with people doing remarkable things, like the Acumen Fund Global Fellows featured on their website and the characters I read about in The Blue Sweater, then I would have the guts to do something amazing too. And of course it did present a chance to meet Jacqueline.  I did not dare mention this second reason in my application as I couldn’t take the risk of having the application marked as fan mail.

Fast forward to today – I was selected as an Acumen Fund East Africa Fellow for my work with the Living in Shanty Towns (LIST) Initiative, and I got my chance to meet Jacqueline, give her a hug, and apologize for blowing her off. The past couple of months of the Fellowship have been incredible. There have been moments of learning, courageous conversations, and reflections with self, with each other, and with the great, historical writers and thinkers that we read and discussed during the “Good Society” seminar. There have been moments getting off the dance floor and into the balcony for a critical look at ourselves and our projects.

It is truly an amazing cohort with an extraordinary diversity of experiences. As one of the other East Africa Fellows, Johnson Kithendu, said: “Some of us have hands that haven’t touched poverty – went to some of the best schools in the World and had secure jobs, but quit to commit to social change – and some have touched and seen poverty and lived it first hand – yet all have the same urgency to lead a life of service and to create a better society.” We share a promise of upholding the dignity of the world’s poorest by providing clean energy to off-grid communities, asset finance to small holder farmers, affordable irrigation pumps, effective micro credit, and by helping farmers add value to their products and create a sustainable life based on farming. Here we have all dared to try to make a better East Africa – and while some may fail in the process, we hope we will have the courage to pick ourselves up and try again.

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I was born and bred in Kibera, and like many other “slum dwellers” (I so hate this phrase), I have been a beneficiary of many youth empowerment and poverty alleviation programs. Sadly, most of them have not had a real impact on our lives – and at times – they have left us worse off. One such project remains ingrained in my mind. It was a youth empowerment project with enough resources, lots of good will, and a near-perfect design. The beauty of this particular effort was that unlike other aid projects, it was scalable and had the potential of impacting hundreds of slum dwellers by way of creating jobs and low cost housing.

Despite great promise, much of this didn’t happen. But, we did get chauffeured around, have good food, interact with different people, and dreamed a bit about an escape from the drudgery of slum life for a while. I am not saying this break was a wholly negative experience; it meant a lot to many of us. But from hundreds of such projects, all that the people in need seem to get is a time out from poverty, and not a real chance to break out of poverty. In most cases the time out lasts to the end of the project cycle.

Why didn’t this project work? I can’t really tell. To the outside world, the project has been featured as a successful one. I do know the 300 beneficiaries gave it their all too, but our lives haven’t changed much as a result.

I am now working in the aid industry, a matter of choice, implementing a Youth Empowerment Project targeting 1,200 youths. A third of these youth will be drawn from my home neighborhood. The organization funding it and employing me to implement it is credible, and has been working with poor communities for forty years and counting. Yet, deep down I fear this project, like so many others, may not have a real impact. This fear has motivated me to call for courageous conversations, to become accountable, and to look hard at the impact we can show for so many long hours of work.

Despite the many failed efforts by poverty alleviation projects, I earnestly believe there is another way in which we can create a world beyond poverty – a world in which every human being lives a dignified life. Poverty assaults that dignity, and it beckons the good will of others to help those in need to not bow their heads down. I will keep my head lifted, and though I may not yet be sure of how to break the cycle of poverty yet, I am sure that I can’t take any more time outs from it.

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Pauline Wanja is an Acumen Fund East Africa Fellow in the Class of 2011-12. Pauline is the Co- Founder & Executive Director of the LIST (Living In Shanty Towns) Initiative, which aims to unify young people living in informal settlements and prepare them for a productive and dignified adulthood and together work toward personal, social, economic and political justice.

The Acumen Fund East Africa Fellows Program is made possible through the sponsorship of KCB Foundation and the Edmond de Rothschild Foundations.