How priest and a book changed street child into a community CEO

Poverty, filth, unemployment and crime can make growing up in slums the ticket to a dead end in life.

It can be hard to escape, we think on our bumpy ride to sprawling Mathere where we’re to meet the Star’s Person of the Year, Kennedy Odede, cofounder and CEO of Shining Hope for Communities (Shofco).

Children sit next to open sewage ditches, having breakfast. They play outside their rusty iron-sheet houses. No masks, of course. Young men idle about, some are obviously drunk. Here and there are pregnant girls, much too young to be mums.

But there’s also energy and hope.

Mathare has more than 500,000 residents jammed into roughly half a square mile.

We arrive at the Shining Hope offices, the name painted in blue and white. We settle down to interview Odede who is dressed in casual clothes, suitable for a hands-on manager in a notorious slum. A suit and tie wouldn’t do.

As we explain to him what took us to his office, the 36-year-old CEO smiles shyly and expresses his gratitude for the nomination, saying a priest made him what he is now.

“I am proud and happy. I know it’s people from the community who voted and trusted in me. I am humbled,” he said.

HOW IT STARTED

Sitting in one of his offices, Odede narrates how he came to found and build Shofco when he lived in Kibera, one of the largest slums in East Africa.

“My family was the poorest. And if you ask around, they will tell you the same thing. My mother would wash clothes and since my father was a proud Luo, Kibera did not show him mercy. He got into alcohol and became violent,” he said.

His mother, a strong and proud woman, used to sell tomatoes and vegetables in a food stall.

“When visitors were to come to our house, she would call us and tell us to apply cooking oil to our lips so we could show that we had eaten – and yet we had slept hungry for days.”

Even in poverty, his mother championed women’s rights in the slum. He got interested in gender issues.

“The idea of Shofco was about uniting people, stopping people from fighting and about taking girls to school. We have Shofco Kibera and Mathare schools,” Odede said.

He had dreams and aspirations and wanted to change mentalities and violence against women and girls in Kibera.

The eldest of eight children, he became a street child at age 10 when he sniffed glue and begged for food.

TURNING POINT

The death of one of his friends – a guy he used to sniff glue with – was a turning point.

“Kamau was killed by ‘mob justice’. His death affected me. He stole a purse and they caught up with him,” Odede said. “That was when I started asking myself if this was the kind of life I bargained for. I started looking for hope in my life.”

Odede rushed to church in Line Saba and Father Alberto gave him the book, I Have a Dream, by Martin Luther King Jnr that inspired his transformation.

“I started having dreams through this book. So then we began a football team of 15 that has grown into this huge organisation that is in 17 slums in Kenya,” he said.

“Kibera being a place of gangs...we worked with reformed youths who are now trained on gender issues. It’s all about owning the community with all these changes. If it is the police, we bring the people closer to them.”

LOVE LIFE

Smiling and relaxing a bit, Odede said he was scared of his dream because it was so big, but it came from his heart's desire.

He received a full scholarship to Wesleyan University in the US state of Connecticut, becoming one of Kibera’s first to receive an American liberal arts education.

As a performing theatre artist, Odede and his crew were invited to a social event in Kibera. 

“I was a very tough man. I was an artist, a performing artist. Some people helped us and we went to perform. These people were working with a volunteer, Jessica Posner, who was absent when we performed," he said.

Afterward, he received an email from Jessica about their performance, adding that she wanted to volunteer and work with their "imaginary Shofco".

“She was into theatre in the United States. So I resisted because I felt like this was a Black people’s movement and we did not want any white person in it,” he said.

But Jessica kept on insisting and Odede decided to give her a chance.

“I asked my cabinet, five of us, about Jessica’s proposal. We then asked her for her CV. We reviewed it and asked her to come and teach us how to document our performing arts,” he said.

“So we met and after a while, she did not want to go back to the US. She said that she wanted to become part of the community. Later, I could not bring myself to tell her, 'I love you, Jessica'."

Odede said in his Kibera culture, it was easy to tell a woman that you love her in Kiswahili.

But he couldn't tell her that.

“Since I love reading novels, I learnt that you can tell a lady that I like you, and they will know what you mean. So that is what I told her,” he added.

They now have three children, including twins.

They have dedicated their lives to bringing hope to urban communities.

 In 2015, they released their New York Times best-selling book: Find Me Unafraid: Love, Loss, and Hope in an African Slum.

SHOFCO

They cofounded Shining Hope for Communities.

“We have libraries, we have created awareness by working with local partners while enriching the lives of people in slums,” Odede said.

In the Covid-19 pandemic, Shofco's impact has been felt by many slum dwellers who nominated him for the advice and help he has given to the community.

Odede was able to mobilise slum communities around the threat of Covid-19 and promote best practices to prevent or contain the spread of the virus. That means wearing masks, washing and sanitising hands, avoiding crowds and keeping social distance.

Shining hope has so far reached more than 2.4 million people. They have had 50,848,549 uses of hand-washing stations and have screened 1,847,328 slum dwellers for symptoms.

Shofco’s approach relies on both direct intervention and community-led mobilisation.

“I am so lucky that we have touched so many lives. We work with the government and I got even nominated to the taskforce by Health CS Mutahi Kagwe. We are even waiting for the Covid vaccine,” he said.

Odede said he has been able to partner with many NGOs, the Rockefeller Foundation, community radio stations and others.

“With Covid-19, people have really supported us. As Shofco, we were there for the people. We sensitised the community on what they were required to do,” he said.

With a handful of volunteers, Odede provides children with basic training on how to uplift themselves.

He teaches both girls and boys about protecting themselves and others from gender-based violence.

“I want my community to be empowered to make the right decisions in life,” the activist said.

Making Shining Hope for Communities a Kenyan ideology is difficult.

“We need more support from Kenya, not necessarily abroad. We need to make this organisation a Kenyan initiative. That is my dream,” he said.

Odede hopes to work more with the government to transform lives.

LOWEST MOMENT

Engrossed in thought for a while, Odede says after he founded Shofco, some people were not happy with what he was doing.

“One day while we were just driving around, my car was shot at in the showground. That was seven years ago. My wife was so scared that she left Kenya for America."

Odede said Jessica's decision to leave for the US shook him.

“I had to follow her to the US and convince her that the shooting was not all about the work at Shofco.. I convinced her to come back later. That was tough but I hit the wall and I bounced back,” he said.

As we conclude the interview, Odede tells us one thing that people don't know about him is that he is shy.

“I am a very shy person. That's because I stammered when I was young. So I speak very quickly because I am afraid the difficulty in speech might return,” he said.