NAIROBI, Kenya – Here in the village of Kibera, life sometimes feels like a pitched battle.

The residents steal electricity taking advantage of overhead wires, children walk barefoot through sewer-filled alleyways, and sometimes people have to dodge “flying toilets,” plastic bags that residents use as toilets and then throw them away in one direction or in the other.

However, it is an uplifting villa.

Against all odds, Kibera is also a place of hopeand offers a lesson in grassroots development from which the world should learn.

The story begins with a boy named after his single mother, who was 15 when she gave birth. kennedy because he wanted him to look like an American president he had heard of.

Little Kennedy Odede did not attend formal school and at the age of 10 ran away from a abusive stepfather and ended up sleeping on the street.

Kennedy taught himself to read and was inspired by a biography by Nelson Mandela that a researcher shared with him.

Kennedy, enthusiastic and charismatic, then formed a self-help association in Kibera called Shining hope for communitiesbetter known as SHOFCO.

An American Wesleyan University student, Jessica Posner, volunteered at SHOFCO and later convinced Wesleyan to accept Kennedy as a full scholarship student, even though she had never attended an actual elementary school.

Jessica and Kennedy fell in love and got married when he graduated.

One of SHOFCO’s first projects was the Kibera Girls’ School, which recruited some of the poorest girls in the slum.

Their parents were sometimes illiterate and a fifth of these girls had been sexually assaulted.

However, the girls knew they were specialand with intensive tutoring they became star students, beating up girls from expensive schools private Kenyan

I am an old friend of Kennedy’s and have followed his work since my first visit a dozen years ago.

A girl I knew then, when she was in second grade, is now studying at Columbia University.

His former classmates study at four other American universities, as well as Kenyan universities.

We recognize that development is difficult, especially in rapidly growing urban suburbs around the world.

Billions of dollars are poured into and into the poorest countries Haiti Y Southern Sudan you see fleets of expensive white SUVs driven by humanitarian organizations; what is missing is long-term economic development.

International aid keeps children alive, which is no small thing.

But it has been less successful when it comes toand transform trouble spots.

This is where SHOFCO is interesting as an alternative model.

His approach to grassroots empowerment bears similarities to BRAC, a Bangladesh-based development organization that I consider to be one of the most effective aid groups in the world, and with fonkozea similar non-profit organization based in Haiti.

“Development has been part of imperialism: you know more about it than anyone because you’re American or European,” Kennedy told me.

He believes international aid is sometimes ineffective in part because it feels like it imposed from outside.

SHOFCO reached out to low-income communities in Kenya and now has 2.4 million members, making it one of the largest grassroots organizations in Africa.

Provide clean water, fight against sexual assault, run a credit union, train people to start small businesses, operate libraries and Internet hotspots, mobilize voters to lobby politicians to bring services to slums, run public health campaigns, and a thousand other things.

Its success is due, in my view, to the fact that it exemplifies an association:

the local leadership together with trust in international best practices.

SHOFCO, for example, has adopted programs of deworming and prevention of cervical canceror reflecting the best of international knowledge, and these were accepted by the local population in part because they trusted Kennedy.

I had wondered how scalable SHOFCO is:

Was it down to Kennedy’s charisma, making it difficult to play in other slums?

No, actually the model has spread smoothly across the country and other Kenyan suburbs have turned out to have their Kennedys untapped.

I often write about poverty, and while the subject can be depressing at times, I also often find inspiration.

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One of the women I met on this visit to Kibera is Lauren Odhiambo, a 23-year-old SHOFCO member, whose father died when she was young.

He shares a two-room box with six members of his family and the occasional rat.

The house has no kitchen or running water, and the night requires some planning:

The neighborhood toilet is closed from 10pm to 6am.

His mother makes $70 a month washing other people’s clothes.

But Lauren joined SHOFCO and took a computer science class that landed her a job earning $250 a month.

Lauren used that income to study at the University of Nairobi and this year will become the first person in her family with a degree.

After graduation, she hopes to find a job that pays her 400 dollars a month.

This wouldn’t have happened without SHOFCO, he said, and I asked him why, hoping he would talk about the computer skills he’d acquired.

Instead, he made a broader argument:

The show taught him that slum dwellers are just as good as everyone else.

“I didn’t just gain knowledge,” he said.

“I gained trust.”

Regarding the ongoing challenges he sees around him in Kibera, he added:

“It’s up to us to change that.”

Kibera still needs decent sewers, schools and roads, but Lauren’s success is a reminder of what a grassroots organization can achieve against the odds in even the grittiest slums.

This fills me with hope.

A bright hope.

c.2023 The New York Times Society