ONE Mom Rachel Fox talks about why she’s excited about Carolina for Kibera’s latest challenge, Kibera for a Day.
This summer, while standing in the middle of the Kibera slum of Nairobi with the other ONE Moms, I felt a disconnect. As I was walking on waste and trash, past 10×10 after 10×10, smiling at the small children repeating “How are you?” I wondered how I could ever translate what I was witnessing into words. I needed a concrete action — I wanted to walk in their shoes, if only for a day. Imagine my enthusiasm when Rye Barcott, co-founder of Carolina for Kibera and author of “It Happened On The Way to War: A Marines Path To Peace,” announced the launch of Power of 26, a 26-day challenge to show people what life is like for the estimated 1 billion people that live in urban slums globally.
Only three days after my trip with the ONE moms, I had my family geared up and signed up to begin #powerof26! Every evening, we received a new email informing us of the next day’s challenge. From washing our clothes by hand, cleaning up trash in our community, sleeping in the smallest room of the house, to sharing Kenya chai with our neighbors, we were getting a small glimpse of what life is like for those living on less than $1 a day.
“Sacrificing for success” -– that was Tabitha’s motto.
I was thinking about those words today as I walked into Kibera, the largest slum in Africa (think Central Park, N.Y., with 1 million people living in squalor).
Rye Barcott, author of a new memoir, “It Happened on the Way to War,” talks to ONE about the delicate balance of life as a former Marine and founder of anti-poverty nonprofit Carolina for Kibera.
So, welcome to the ONE’s DC office. What brings you here today?
We’re working with the ONE Campaign to use “It Happened on the Way to War” to reach out to high schools and colleges to send the message about the power of participatory development, and how others can use this approach to spark change in other communities that they’re connected to.
Here’s a post from our partners at Carolina for Kibera (CFK). As you may remember, CFK was recently chosen by the University of Michigan—this year’s ONE Campus Challenge winners—to receive a $10,000 prize.
Last week, Carolina for Kibera was thrilled to host Dr. Jill Biden as she and her family arrived to take a tour of Kibera, East Africa’s largest slum. On her visit, she toured CFK’s Binti Pamoja (“Daughters United”), a reproductive health, women’s rights, and leadership development center. Using drama, dance, creative writing and peer education, the program creates safe spaces for girls in the slum to explore issues that affect them, including HIV/AIDS, drug abuse, rape and sexual health. Graduates of the program are then trained to lead their own community groups, expanding the reach of the program to over 700 girls.
Aliyah Wanjira, a Binti alumni leader, then showed Dr. Biden her home in Gatwekera village and shared with her the role that Binti Pamoja played in developing her confidence and equipping her to be a leader and role model for girls in Kibera.
Hear more from Dr. Biden about her journey in the video below:
-Leann Bankoski, Executive Director, Carolina For Kibera, Inc.
Every year, ONE hosts the ONE Campus Challenge (OCC): a friendly competition to determine which university’s student body has the most effective global poverty-fighting campaign.
College students work together — with others on their campus and across the country — to learn about global poverty and preventable disease, and to achieve change on behalf of the world’s poorest people through advocacy, action and awareness-raising.
During the school year, students earn points and recognition for their schools by participating in different actions and monthly challenges, including advocating for important legislation, educating people on campus about challenges to international development, and raising the visibility of ONE and the issues we champion. The schools accumulating the most points in monthly challenges and throughout the season are eligible for exciting prizes and national recognition for their efforts in the fight against global poverty.
The 2009-2010 ONE Campus Challenge title goes to the University of Michigan – Ann Arbor! ONE at UMich has been hard at work since September – gathering petition signatures, recruiting new members, lobbying their Members of Congress, educating their peers, and mobilizing the entire Ann Arbor community in ONE’s mission.
For their Top 10 advocacy project, ONE at UMich chose to focus on maternal and child health, where they demonstrated some simple programs being implemented on the ground that are saving thousands of lives. In addition to a phenomenal giant Africa map petition, they also successfully logged 78 calls to Congress, 78 handwritten letters to Michigan Senators Levin and Stabenow, and an astounding 789 letters to Congress signed by UMich students.
For their efforts, ONE at UMich will receive $10,000 in their name to give to the ONE Partner Organization of their choice. UMich has chosen Carolina for Kibera, a small nonprofit in the Kibera slum in Nairobi, Kenya – the largest slum in East Africa. University of Michigan Campus Leader Stephanie Parrish visited Carolina for Kibera as a student participant in Summer 2009 on the first-ever ONE Campus Challenge Trip to Africa.
The University of Michigan is very deserving of this honor. The ONE Campus Challenge Team would like to thank the U of M group for all of their tireless work advocating for the world’s poorest people; we are very much looking forward to what ONE at UMich will accomplish in next year’s ONE Campus Challenge!
Congrats, Wolverines!!
PS– If you have had a chance yet, be sure to check out UMich’s video:
A guest post from Rye Barcott and Emily Reynolds Pierce of the ONE Partner organization Carolina for Kibera.
The recent post-election violence in Kenya has stunned nonprofit organizations fighting to end poverty in the country, including Carolina for Kibera (CFK), an international NGO with institutional roots at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a partner organization of the ONE Campaign. Our work with youth at CFK centers on promoting ethnic reconciliation through sports, fighting gender-based discrimination, and providing primary health care in the Kibera slum of Nairobi, Kenya. The past month in Kibera has been frightening, and we are heartbroken to see the hard work of our young CFK staff and volunteers, as well as that of many other community-based organizations in Kibera, unravel so quickly at the hands of feuding politicians.
People of Kenya’s six major ethnic groups live together in Kibera – east Africa’s largest slum with nearly 1 million residents. Although ethnic divisiveness is no stranger to Kenyan politics, no one anticipated the level of violence that has engulfed Kibera and much of Kenya. Swaths of Kibera have been burned to the ground. Many of our staff and volunteers have had their homes looted and burned. Our office and community medical clinic are located in the thick of the ethnic fighting in the Kibera slum of Nairobi, and are two of the few structures left standing. CFK member Fatuma Roba, 23, is a Digital Diarist for UNICEF Radio and Voices of Youth. Ms. Roba reported on the situation from Kibera for on Jan. 2 and Jan. 11.
We at CFK sensed in mid-January that the situation was likely to get worse before it got better. Security felt tenuous at best. Then yesterday, on Jan. 29, Kenyan parliamentary member Mugabe Were, 39, was gunned down and killed in Kibera. Mr. Were was a member of the opposition party and vocal supporter of CFK. When word of Mr. Were’s death spread throughout the slum, violence erupted yet again.
The violence reminds us that development depends on good governance, local leadership, and effective security. Our own effectiveness, as CFK, also depends on our ability to read and respond to events, and that is why we are currently concentrating on a short-term feeding program and emergency medical assistance to meet the immediate needs of our friends and neighbors in Kibera. Additionally, (more…)
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Every year, ONE hosts the ONE Campus Challenge (OCC): a friendly competition to determine which university’s student body has the most effective global poverty-fighting campaign.
