Kennedy Odede and Jessica Posner

2010

Kennedy Odede and Jessica Posner

Shining Hope for Communities

http://www.hopetoshine.org

Community Improvement & Economic Development, Education & Youth Leadership

The Bold Idea:

Bold idea: Combat intergenerational cycles of poverty and gender inequality by linking tuition-free schools for girls to essential social services in the Kenyan slum of Kibera.

Lucy Auwor lives in the Kibera slum of Nairobi, Kenya—the largest in Africa. At age six, Lucy was forced to exchange sex for food to survive. Lucy knew that as a poor, uneducated woman her life prospects were bleak. Lucy is just one of nearly half a million young women in Kibera denied education and made to suffer daily indignities. 

Shining Hope for Communities has developed an innovative model to combat gender inequality. They link free schools for girls to holistic community centers that provide residents with essential services unavailable elsewhere through a community center adjacent to the school. By concretely linking essential health and economic services to a school for girls, they demonstrate that benefiting women benefits the whole community, cultivating a community ethos that makes women respected members of society. In their model, girls’ schools become portals through which attitudes toward women change as community members associate needed services with an institution dedicated to girls’ education.      
 

Biography:

Kennedy was born in and lived in Kibera for the first 23 years of his life. He saw the lives of many women crushed like his mother’s and sisters’, and dreamed of changing the position of women in his society. Kennedy is the first person from the Kibera slum to attend a four-year college: Wesleyan University. Jessica has worked with Kennedy in Kibera since 2007. She will never forget her friendships with women who suffer rape and abuse for wanting a better life.  Jessica graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Wesleyan University in 2009.

Moment of Obligation: What experiences led to the desire to start your own organization?
I lived in the Kibera slum for the first 23 years of my life. The oldest in a poor family of eight, I watched my three sisters fail to get an education. My father abused my mom and kept our family hungry by spending our little money on alcohol, refusing to send my sisters to school. Resisting, my mom taught me about gender equality. Starting at age seven, I sold peanuts on the road to put my siblings and myself through school. Despite my efforts, two of my sisters had to drop out after becoming teenage mothers. I saw many women’s lives crushed like my mother’s and sisters’, and I dreamed of finding a way to change the position of women in my society.

Gall to Think Big: What has given you the ability to dream big and take on deeply entrenched social and difficult problems? (Such as experiences, skills, events, etc.)
After 23 years in Kibera, I intimately understand the challenges of daily life there. The first time I ever had extra money, 20 cents in 2005, I bought a soccer ball and started SHOFCO, a community organization. I ran SHOFCO for 4 years with no money, but with faith in the ability of people to change their own lives.  Because of my life in Kibera I have always felt compelled to combat the circle of poverty in which I was born poor, raised poor, and will return to help those who are poor like me to change our society.

New and Untested: What's innovative about your new idea for social change?
I lived it: Survival is the first concern for those in extreme poverty, not gender equality. The biggest barrier to sending girls to school is not always gender discrimination, but resource priorities. Boys are simply more culturally valued. Made to choose, families send their sons to school. Our model intertwines survival and gender equity: Attitudes do not just shift, people change based on perceptions of personal benefit. We build a lasting community incentive structure, interrupting the objective conditions of poverty that hold old attitudes in place. Free schooling makes educating girls not a question of resources, but of desire. With a clinic and computer center at the school (and other services), parents want to access resources themselves, motivating them to educate their daughter. If these services are available to anyone, regardless of whether they have a child at the school, tangible personal gain is associated with the presence of a school for girls. This has a ripple effect in the community: Women are valued because they attract needed services. Our incentive system challenges current thought parameters, linking survival to gender equity.

Seeing Possibilities: What are the most important qualities to be a successful social entrepreneur?
I have learned in my own life that it is important to always listen to others.  I believe in working alongside a community to empower people to change their own lives.  In developing a social enterprise it is important to focus on the good you can bring to the life of one person, and then find a way to multiply that impact.  Also, you must never give up.  Many times I was sure that I would die, that there was no hope for me but I never allowed myself to be daunted by the great odds I faced.

Which musical artists/albums get you going and keep you inspired?
I love Reggae because it is music with a powerful message to resist oppression.  I especially love Joseph Hill (Culture), Bob Marley, and Burning Spear.

What books do you recommend (pleasure, work and anything in between)?
Long Walk to Freedom by Nelson Mandela, Negro with a Hat: The Rise and Fall of Marcus Garvey, The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, Harry Potter, Siddhartha

Which websites do you visit often (work and/or personal)?
www.nytimes.com, www.cnn.com, www.dailynation.com, www.washingtonpost.com, www.wesleyan.edu, www.facebook.com

What advice or quote do you keep close to your heart as a social change leader?
I believe that the world is a mirror.  In the face of terrible injustice and inequality, we must reflect to the world the change that we would like to see.  Whatever we do in this world will be reflected back to us, and so we must fight and fight hard for what is right.  If the world is going to change, we must recognize that we must all play our parts.  It is not sustainable to live in a world where 20% of the population consumes 80% of the world's resources.

Jessica Posner

Moment of Obligation: What experiences led to the desire to start your own organization?
In Kibera, moments of obligation happen often.  I'll never forget when I met Kennedy in 2007 and we worked together on a theatre project with young people in Kibera. Through this project I befriended 17-year-old Cathy. When Cathy went to school with the help of a sponsor her mother burned Cathey’s belongings, angry that she was not doing enough housework. Cathy moved in with her father: he abused and impregnated her. She was forced to sell her body to survive, and was almost killed by a man who beat her because she asked him to wear a condom. Soon after, Cathy told me that she found a lump in her breast, but that she was unable to afford medical care, as she could not even feed her infant son.  After our talk, I found a doctor willing to help, but I never saw Cathy again. She disappeared, and I learned one of Kibera’s most harsh lessons: there is such a thing as too late.  After Kennedy was accepted to Wesleyan University to pursue his own dream of a college education, we began to make our dream of changing the lives of women a reality.

Gall to Think Big: What has given you the ability to dream big and take on deeply entrenched social and difficult problems? (Such as experiences, skills, events, etc.)
Kennedy always inspires me because he fought against all odds to create remarkable change in both his community and his own life.  I am always moved to action  by the resilience of our students and community members who face daunting odds, but hang on to their dreams of a better life.  I will never forget August 18th, 2009: the day we dedicated the Kibera School for Girls, along with the community, demonstrating a collective belief in the power of hope. As I looked at our students on the day of the dedication I hoped that their fates would be different. However, part of me knew that without more than a school, without health care, without proper nutrition and sanitation, our students were still at tremendous risk. We began to work to provide desperately needed services alongside a school for girls. I am inspired everyday because our students, their families, and community members are now leading the way to a better tomorrow for themselves, and for all of us.

New and Untested: What's innovative about your new idea for social change?
Our concrete link between services and girls’ schools is the first of its kind. By investing in education, health care, sanitation, and nutrition in one central location, community members associate these initiatives with benefitting women or educating girls—improving livelihoods while changing attitudes. Our school itself is groundbreaking as well. Instead of traditional curricula where students passively listen, demonstrate knowledge via exams and suffer corporal punishment, our curriculum instills a love of learning, motivating students to surmount challenges.

Seeing Possibilities: What are the most important qualities to be a successful social entrepreneur?
It’s essential that you believe in what you’re doing in your very core because there will be many challenging days.  It’s also important that you are always ready to question your convictions.

Which musical artists/albums get you going and keep you inspired?
Santigold, Imogen Heap, Dar Williams

What books do you recommend (pleasure, work and anything in between)?
Purple Hibiscus and Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Adichie.  If Beale Street Could Talk by James Baldwin. Mountains Beyond Mountains.  We Wish to Inform you that Tomorrow we will be Killed with our Families.

Which websites do you visit often (work and/or personal)?
www.nytimes.com  www.cnn.com  www.yogatothepeople.com  www.echoinggreen.org  www.hopetoshine.org  www.thefacebook.com

What advice or quote do you keep close to your heart as a social change leader?
I believe strongly in always cultivating awareness of the challenges in your path.  Then, I believe in moving forward not in spite of, but because of these great challenges.  Things happen when we keep going while everyone around us tells us to give up.  I think there is magic in what others might call crazy, that there is always the possibility for rupture when we dive into our work headfirst, and don’t look back.