Being a part of the team of Social Innovation Fellows at PopTech last week was a transformative experience. Over the next month I’ll blog more about what I learned and the amazing folks from whom I learned. In the meantime, listen to the incredible Fellows about what we see “social innovation” to be.

What does social innovation mean to you?

A Forum for African Women Educationalists (FAWE) study in Kenya in 2007 showed over two months, sanitary pad provision coupled with reproductive health education reduced absenteeism from 4.9 days to 1.2 days per month as compared to the control group.

It further noted,

whereas 90.3% of the girls from Nairobi did not miss any school following the puberty education sessions and receiving sanitary pads, only 67.6% of girls from Garissa did not miss any school following the interventions. This is because the survey revealed that circumcised girls experience longer and more painful periods than uncircumsized ones, contributing to absenteeism despite the interventions.” As well, class participation was enhanced significantly in the group receiving interventions, with girls shown to be “less shy and withdrawn.”

The study strongly recommended the government provide free sanitary pads to school girls.

Another study in Ghana was undertaken by the Said Business School of Oxford. It confirmed that post-pubescent girls were missing as many as five days of school per month. With intervention of pads and education on menstrual management and hygiene, the rate of absenteeism was cut by slightly more than half, from about 21% of school days to about 9%. In the village where education only was provided, there was also a reduction in absenteeism, but the effect was delayed.

The study notes:

The girls also reported an improved ability to concentrate in school, higher confidence levels, and increased participation in a range of everyday activities while menstruating. Negative experiences relating to soiling and embarrassment declined, as did feelings of shame and isolation, and measures of well-being improved.

The study points to a number of important issues for policy makers and NGOs in developing countries, not least how to fund and implement a programme of sanitary product provision, and how to dispose of the pads with minimal environmental impact particularly in rural areas.

To summarize: The Benefits of providing sanitary pads to girls

• Increased attendance during menses
• More frequent participation in class discussions
• Increased participation in physical activities
• Enhanced personal grooming
• Improved self-confidence
• Increased health from using hygienic products

Result: Girls attend, compete, matriculate

The 110 girls we serve in 5 schools in Kibera confirm. Read some of their blogs about the impact of sanitary pad provision in their lives:

• We feel loved
• Free to play
• Thank you ZanaA
• Positive Changes
• Positive Changes in Our Lives

This Easter weekend, those of us espousing the Christian faith celebrate a God who so loved us that He offered Himself for us, a living sacrifice. He first loved us when we were mired in our own issues. Our response to this love is to then put Him first in all we do and try to live like Him and live up to His standard. But what are we living up to? the God who came that we celebrate this weekend wasn’t your ordinary savior, and being a hero didn’t mean winning at the games of this world.

Misunderstood by the masses, betrayed by those who loved him, Jesus does not often look like the model of the savior for whom the Israelites were waiting to lead them into God’s coming Kingdom. With no place to lay his head, no multi-million dollar company/organization/mega-church to lead, no massive bank account to use for tax-deductible charitable contributions, he is not one people would ordinarily look to for inspiration – except for what happened at Easter, the resurrection.

Two thousand years later, I don’t think we’ve learned very much. I’ll wager a bet that many of the very people on Wall Street who knowingly profited from the downfall of millions in America and tens of millions globally went to church, and were probably even the head of the Outreach Committee. I don’t think they emulated the savior they might claim.

Sadly the Wall Street fiasco is not the most recent saga of deceit to affect millions. Greg Mortenson of Three Cups of Tea has been exposed in an online book by of his formerly most ardent supporters, John Krakauer (of Into Thin Air fame), as a fabricator of lies and a man who would defraud hundreds of thousands of school children. His Pennies for Peace (P4P) program was supposed to go 100% towards building schools, yet only $612,000 of $1.7M raised by P4P in 2009 alone went to this stated objective whereas $1.4M supposedly went to flying Mortenson around in his private jet.

Said Daniel Borochoff, president of the charity watchdog the American Institute of Philanthropy, according to Krakauer:

Mortenson is acting as if CAI was his own private business. It’s not. He’s using the public’s money. CAI is a tax-exempt organization subsidized by our tax dollars. It sounds like he’s violating every financial practice that nonprofits are supposed to follow.

A similar accusation is leveled at Wall Street and their cohorts, that they violed every financial practice that the for-profit world is supposed to follow. These men (and by in large they are men) who perpetuated the propagation of sub-prime loans were service providers for – not owners of – people’s investments, investing other people’s money. They failed fundamentally in the duty entrusted to them, instead paying first allegiance to themselves and to their bank account, which is the same accusation facing Mortenson. (A good movie explaining the financial crisis and its creators is Inside Job).

Both Mortenson and Wall Street promised quick fixes. Solve poverty? – build a school. Can’t afford a house? – now you can! Even Mortenson’s work of building schools isn’t as simple as people would wish to believe, to create impact:

[Mortenson’s organization] CAI has become proficient at erecting schools off the beaten path, and Mortenson deserves praise for that. And it is true, from facts that speak volumes, educating girls is the single best thing we can do for a country. But filling those schools with effective teachers and actually educating children turn out to be much more difficult than constructing schoolrooms. On this front, Mortenson has delivered far less than he has professed.

And we believe, because we are desperate to, and because I think we are all hard-wired for faith: to believe that which we cannot see. And while I think that the bankers and Mortenson put themselves as the heros of their own stories, I also think too many heralded them as saviors and didn’t question the systems they were creating. We wanted to believe the Wall Street bankers as our saviors to new homes, we wanted to believe Mortenson as the savior of Central Asia. (Unfortunately, Mortenson himself never even saw most of the schools he claimed to build in Afghanistan!) Herein lies our downfall: we so want a savior that we can overlook accountability.

Krakauer reports this statement by another former friend of Mortenson:

The way I’ve always understood Greg,” Callahan reflects, “is that he’s a symptom of Afghanistan. Things are so bad that everybody’s desperate for even one good-news story. And Greg is it. Everything else might be completely [messed] up over there, but here’s a guy who’s persuaded the world that he’s making a difference and doing things right.” Mortenson’s tale “functioned as a palliative,” Callahan suggests. “It soothed the national conscience…. but the illusion made people feel good about themselves, so nobody was in a hurry to look behind the curtain. Although it doesn’t excuse his dishonesty, Mortenson was merely selling what the public was eager to buy. [emphasis mine]

This Easter, I’m not here to soothe the national, American conscience. Sorry.

We are adults, we should be able to live within the tensions of the difficulties of reality. Reality is hard. The hard reality is people are falliable, we all need to be accountable and demand accountability. Mortenson even wrote as much in Stones for Schools:

[T]he duties of speaking, promoting, and fund-raising into which I have been thrust… have often made me feel like a man caught in the act of conducting an illicit affair with the dark side of his own personality

This is indeed the human predicament, into which Jesus came and because of which he died on a cross.

There is a harder but more rewarding path, one where we don’t have to hide behind a curtain. As humans,  we all have incredible limitless potential to do good, because we have free will. It means we also have incredible, limitless potential to do bad – it is a question of what we nurture, through small acts: Do we say sorry to our spouse? Do we listen attentively to our children? Do we turn in honest reports to our bosses?

So, this Easter, the question is: who is your savior? Who is the hero of your story? What curtain are you afraid to look behind for fear of disappointment? We cannot keep nurturing our dark side or the dark side of others, it keeps setting ourselves up for a cascading series of choices leading to ruin. A Pakistani local leader summed it up:

When [Mortenson's friend] Callahan told [a local Pakistani leader] Azoy about Mortenson’s reaction [of changing the story of] his gracious act [into a lie], Azoy was struck with an insight: “Maybe Mortenson thinks he’s a white knight, riding in to rescue Afghanistan single-handedly,” he said. “Afghanistan’s full of expats who want to be saviors. Once they get that idea in their heads, there’s not room for much else.”

Even our gold standard whose name we use, Mother Theresa, as a representative of all things good and of God, and/or her organization, seems to have had a dark side, too. Her organization is also mired in accusations of millions of dollars unreported and people untreated who were seeking help. Says one dismayed former volunteer: The mission currently operates over 450 homes and maintains an average of 4,000 workers while consistently failing to provide statistics on the efficacy of their work.

We need a savior. We ourselves are not going to make the grade, if that wasn’t clear before, I hope its clear from these scandals. That is why Jesus is the good news for those who believe. We have a Bigger advocate who can help us surmount the gap between what is possible and what we can attain. We can be accountable, and bear fruit that lasts, because we have Easter, the resurrection. Change is always possible, at the last minute, in the darkest hour of the world or of our soul.

What does change look like? If we want to not be a savior, but at least a hero, what would that look like? I have a few suggestions, and would love to hear others:

1. Humility. Not self-flagellation which is just another way of self-aggrandizing by publicly trying to put ourselves down, often with the desire to have others say “no, no, you’re great!” Being comfortable with the good things about ourselves and with our weaknesses, and recognizing both.
2. Partnership. Of course we want to help others, of course we want to fix problems and heal people and solve poverty. But we can’t do it alone. Anyone who seems to be a one-man or one-woman show probably is only able to do as much as one person can, and their ability to make lasting change is limited.
3. Admitting truth. The truth is enough. “Why,” many people asked, “did Mortenson have to lie?” His story was brilliant enough without having to lapse into fantastic embellishments. He didn’t have to, but my guess is a dangerous combination of fear (of not being good enough) and ego (of wanting to be great) drove him. We must overcome our insecurity that what we have or what we’ve done isn’t enough. This leads to transparency, which facilitates impact and accountability.
4. Speaking the truth. Sometimes many-man shows can be worse than one-man ones – we can look at the fall-out from the financial crisis and see this. Imagine if just a handful of people on Wall Street spoke up about the lies that were being perpetuated and the actions that were being undertaken on Wall Street. Imagine if the regulators and government agents supposed to protect the people actually put the people over their own pocketbooks. That voice could have changed the world and saved the suffering of tens of millions.
5. Recognizing complexity. We want a simple story, a 140-character twitter feed that shows how lasting change is possible, now. That is almost never possible. True transformation is a lifetime goal, and real solutions are not readily implementable. This is something we keep in tension all the time at ZanaA. Beware of quick-fixes or quick money.
6. Standing out from the crowd. It is easy for people to hide behind the masses, either in their giving (to “mainstream” causes), or in their taking (of sub-prime derivatives etc.) rather than standing up and asking the accountability questions. We tend to allow fear to rule us, and a desire to conform, instead of following our internal compass that points to the true north of where we want to go.
7. Leading with love. Love is inherently unselfish. It seeks not its own gain, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is proactive and relentless and does not demand reciprocity. It perseveres. It is accountable.

Are we looking for a savior? We don’t need the pressure of having to be that, we already have one. But, if we stood by these principles, we might be all become true heros, and that, I think, would be enough.

Who are some of your heros, and why? What characteristics do true heros have?

I feel we’re coming down with a bad case of the Hague… or should I say a GREAT case of the Hague. It rhymes with plague, and today Kenya’s Pharaohs are feeling the heat, because they’re day of reckoning is coming. John Githongo was ostensibly the Moses of Kenya’s post-independence, an elite-born of the dominant ethnic group saying “let my people go” from this economic captivity of corruption crippling the economy of Kenya.

You could say this blog is Youth Tsunami IIb, picking up on the topic of impunity I mentioned in my last blog of the series. My voice is especially for those in the West to help begin a process of understanding about Africa in general and Kenya in particular, and there is nothing more important happening in this generation right now than the Hague.

For those reading this who don’t regularly stay tuned to African breaking news, and may not be up on international justice either, the Hague in Holland is the location of the International Criminal Court (ICC), where five senior Kenyan politicians and one radio executive have been summoned last Thursday and Friday April 7th/8th, having been accused of crimes against humanity – i.e. organizing and perpetuating the 2007-2008 post-election violence. The reason is that never in Kenya’s history has any prominent person – whose corruption is largely flaunted publicly – been held accountable or convicted. And now, two of the top suspects at the ICC are two of the top presidential contenders for 2012 – so first, they are as big of a fish as they come; and second, it may  fundamentally changes the potential course of Kenyan politics in this critical first election after the implementation of the new constitution last August as they may not be able to run for office with their trial underway.

To step back a moment, US Ambassador to Kenya Michael Ranneberger said Kenyan Ministers (of parliament, the robed ones bearing crosses are for another blog) are the most corrupt country in Africa. Another global survey puts Kenya as only #20 on the most-corrupt-countries-of-the-world list, barely beating Congo and Angola. (Big woop. This is no way means that we’re “okay”). You can see an interactive map of the most corrupt, though, which is pretty cool.

On cover of one of Kenya’s newspapers last month (the Star, 17 March 2011) was yet another article about corruption. “Attorney General unwilling to prosecute Anglo Leasing: Wako Shielding Mudavadi – Wikileaks.”  Ango Leasing, dubbed Anglo Fleecing by the media when it came to light, is combined with The Goldenberg Scandal to be Kenya’s most outrageous looting of funds, have been turned into a public circus with grand commissions held to get to the bottom of the scandal but nothing ever done to bring justice. The ordinary Kenya witnessed how specific businessmen and leading politicians stole billions of dollars from the government through fictitious companies and ghost contracts. Some of these people include current Internal Security Minister George Saitoti, former Transport and Internal Security Minister Chris Murungaru, former Finance Minister David Mwiraria, current Public Works Ministry Chris Obure and Deputy Primer Minister Musaila Mudavadi, as well as former permanent secretaries and other government officials. These are the names listed on the front page. Everyone knows. But no one is prosecuted. The projects in which they are implicated total over KES 56 billion ($700 million USD). For perspective, this was nearly the same amount of money that Kenya receives each year in aid.

Micaela Wrong’s book It’s Our Turn to Eat chronicles former Anti-Corruption Czar John Githongo’s attempt to root out corruption, which resulted in his fleeing the country. The damning evidence was shared over time, and again in the book, and directly implicates not only President Kibaki and the Mount Kenya Mafia but head of civil service Francis Muthaura who is one of the Ocampo Six (so named because of chief prosecutor of the ICC, Luis Moreno-Ocampo naming of six suspects), former Justice Minister Kiriatu Murungi, and others abovementioned. Moi may well be one of the best grabbers of public funds in history, reported siphoning over Sh130 billion ($2Bn USD) and with key people close to him linked to drug trafficking and money laundering. That’s probably the tip of the iceberg. Most of these mentioned have basically been playing musical chairs in politics for twenty to nearly fifty years, doing whatever they want with impunity, because everyone in power is in on the game and protecting each other.

So you can see how Kenyans would be fed up. And you can see how high the stakes are, and that it might make some people rather nervous to have the ICC coming in and messing up this nice little balancing act of looting, because once one card is knocked down, the whole house of cards may tumble with it. The circus of politicians running around Africa and to UN Security Council countries trying desperately to get a postponement or a return of jurisdiction to Kenya implies an appalling self-indictment of complicity, especially as thousands of internally displaced persons continue to languish in distant hovels. The cartoon in today’s paper of the Ocampo Six homecoming tomorrow sums it up:

Says Githongo, “They [the political elite] have never come across a problem that they can’t bribe, intimidate, or kill,” says Mr. Githongo, quoted in a recent article, “This is not a direction that the elite would have chosen, and they will fight each step of the way.”

Now, the suspects are just that, innocent until proven guilty. And maybe some will be cleared, and others brought in over the course of the trial. Who knows? But right now in case you’ve missed who has been summoned to the Hague, the cast of characters includes:

• William Ruto: formerly Prime Minister Raila Odinga’s right-hand man during the past election in the party called ODM (Orange Democratic Movement), now in an alliance with Uhuru and others to try to keep Odinga out of the Presidency in 2012 (this alliance being newly formed and calling itself the G7)
• Henry Kosgey: close associate of former President Moi and also Kalenjin like Moi and who, under Moi’s reign, acquired obscene amounts of land in the Mau Forest; chairman of ODM; been a cabinet minister of almost everything, currently being investigated for dubious activities while he was Minister of Transport
• Joshua Sang, a radio talk show host on KASS FM, a Kalenjin vernacular radio station, accused in particular of using coded words to incite violence
• Uhuru Kenyatta: Deputy Prime Minister, son of the first president Jomo Kenyatta, one of the biggest landowners in Kenya, currently also Minister of Finance, Kikuyu like President Kibaki; accused particularly of organizing meeting with the outlawed Mungiki sect to incite violence
• Retired General Hussein Ali, then-head of the police force; has done a good amount to clean up the police force in the past, yet in the post-election violence his office is accused of giving a “shoot to kill” order such that gunshot wounds from police are reportedly the single biggest cause of death during the violence
• Francis Muthaura, career politician and Head of Civil Service, also Kikuyu secretary to the cabinet; one of the reported insiders of the Anglo Leasing scandals, according to Githongo; accused of leading secret meetings in Kibaki’s office, where revenge attacks against supporters of Kibaki’s opposition were planned, also accused of authorizing the use of excessive force against protesters by the police

The first three are charged with being involved in a well-prepared plan to attack supporters of the governing party, while the latter three are charged with organizing attacks on the people protesting the election results, which were widely viewed as rigged.

Now, if America would just style up and sign the Rome Statute to also submit to the laws of the ICC, that would make me the happiest American in Kenya I could be. How is it that we (America) can advocate so ferociously for Kenya to undergo this process and not allow ourselves to be under scrutiny as well? It rather damages our credibility. I’m betting the average American doesn’t even know the ICC exists, or that the US helped to create it yet flouts its authority, or the enhanced negative image of America this perpetuates internationally.

I believe in America, I believe in Kenya, but we all have so far to go. But for now, here’s to Kenya, and here’s to a process of justice for all, and for ending the culture of impunity for the Pharoahs whose time of judgment, we pray, has finally come.

For ongoing news about the ICC, please keep an eye on international news such as the BBC and Al Jazeera and Kenyan news like the Nation and the Standard.

What are your predictions as to what will happen, and why?

• Inequalities in income distribution
• A culture of impunity
• A culture of corruption & complicity by other stakeholders in society
• Entrenched regimes

Inequalities in Income Distribution

In Kenya, the country’s top 10% households control 42% of the total income while the bottom 10% control less than 1%. With a gini coefficient of 0.57 in 1999 (which has gotten worse), Kenya ranks among the top ten most unequal countries in the world and the fifth in Africa. The top three most unequal countries are from Africa; two of which have been involved in social and political conflicts. Yet in America, the top 10% control 70% of the wealth while the bottom 50% control just 2% of the wealth.

Arguably America’s revolution was in the voting booth in last election. In another blog series, I’m going to look at the problems in America, and what we as America could possibly learn from the “developing world.” America’s outlook is not rosy, and Africa’s is not bleak. Things are much more complicated than that.

But in focusing at the moment on Kenya, our inequality here is directly linked to corruption and impunity. And it is true, the donor community has some significant responsibility in creating this monster of consuming government coffers, but that is a blog for another day.

Above: President Kibaki smiling with the knowledge that he’s untouchable despite his clear links to corruption that many says is worse than it was under Moi’s regime

Culture of Impunity & Complicity

On cover of one of Kenya’s newspapers last week (the Star, 17 March 2011) was yet another article about corruption, another blip in the public circus of impunity. Top names feature recurrently alongside facts about billions of shillings stolen. Everyone knows. But no one is prosecuted. The projects getting the most coverage are called the Anglo Leasing Scandal with fake contracts dishing out over KES 56 billion ($700 million USD) to Ministers, Permanent Secretaries and other government officials still in power. For perspective, this was nearly the same amount of money that Kenya receives each year in aid.

Then, this week, a front page article proclaimed how Parliament wants to “earn” 8 months’ salary for having approved the new constitution and stepping out in August 2012 (as per the constitution they voted in) which would mean their “contract” of 5 months would be terminated early. What employer gives over 17 months’ advance notice and still gives out nearly a year of salary? Their compensation package they want to approve for themselves for doing absolutely nothing amounts to $25 million . Oh, and –they’ve spent at least $400,000 trying to get the support of other nations to rally around the Kenyan government’s attempt to get the  accused perpetrators of the post-election violence out of being tried at the ICC – oh but good news, Qadaffi backed it! Now 40 Ministers want to come to the Hague to stand with the accused. There’s no clearer picture they could paint of their own mutual culpability.

Above: VP Kilonzo Musyoka with businessman-turned-pastor Kamlesh Patni (chief architect of the $820 million Goldenberg Affair) who now goes around praising Jesus and keeping the current regime in power

The businessmen are complicit in this corruption, its not just the politicians to blame. Noted the former Anti-Corruption Czar John Githongo of his brother:

[He] had many friends in the business community, and they took a distinctly pragmatic view of Ango Leasing… As long as they were making money, they could tolerate sleaze. ‘They’re telling me: “In whose interest is it for the government to fall? Let the tenpercenters have their 10 per cent, what we care about is stability.” What you have to realize is that Kenya’s don’t really believe in democracy.’ (p. 240 of my version)

The youth were also complicit too, allowing themselves to be bribed into violence. That is, in my opinion, why politicians are blasting American Ambassador Ranneberger for funding nonpartisan youth mobilization in politics. Not that they legitimately think that America is funding something bad, but because the old guard will not then be able to mobilize the youth the way they did in the 2007 election to sow violence in order to reap political and financial gain.

Entrenched regimes

If politicians relinquish power, they relinquish the controls protecting them from prosecution; therefore, they do whatever need be to stay in power. Kibaki rode into power in 2002 on a coalition party ticket with the promise to be a one-term president. How is it that he then turns the country into chaos in the next election in 2007 with a fly-by-night swearing in to office and a major fight to sign an agreement for a coalition government with the same parties he campaigned with in 2002?

I’m convinced the only reason former President Moi conceded power was due to external pressures. Just as the international community (read: Europe, America) are using “frozen assets” as a lever to wedge Gadaffi out of power, I think that is what happened here. Gadaffi said no (so far). I think Moi said yes. Is it right for outside countries to meddle in State leadership? Are external pressures justified to oust entrenched regimes? Or should the youth be in charge, by whatever means necessary? There are so many questions, but I would say that Kenya does have an entrenched regime, like so many Sub-Saharan countries, which makes youth revolution very real.

I think there are several things we must ask ourselves as a country, if we want to avoid upheaval:

• How are we preparing the youth for leadership?
• How are we teaching analytic and listening skills, or compassion for people who are different?
• How are we healing from past violence, resettlement of those who were displaced in 2008.
• How are we putting a stop to the culture of impunity?
• How are we uniting for peace?
• How are we doing these things as individuals? as families? as member or leaders of religious organizations? as participants in NGOs? as staff or leaders in business? as participants in government?

I have great hope for Kenya, and I believe in the youth. Every day I work with youth who inspire and encourage me, and every day I see amazing things Kenya is doing right. You can meet many of them here on this website. But we have a long way to go, and too much at stake to not persevere. Because so much could go so wrong so quickly.

Two journalists were quoted in Michela Wrong’s book about Githongo, in her book Its Our Turn to Eat:

“In future, I will never, ever, write about a country being “stable” when so much of its population lives below the poverty line” commented a Dutch journalist (p. 305)

“It’s bizarre,” pondered one foreign correspondent. “We’ve all been writing for years about ethnic tension, the growing divide between rich and poor, unsustainable pressure on the land. And yet somehow none of us digested the implications of our own articles. (p. 313)

Lets hope that positive change continues in Africa and America and beyond through peaceful means.

In next blog, I’ll take a look at what gender has to do with violence within society and with violence perpetuated by the State.

What do you think? Will Sub-Saharan Africa see peaceful or violent revolution? Do you have positive solutions to the questions above? Please share them!

The Japanese tsunami caused the earth to shift on its axis, creating permanent and shocking geological transformations; I believe these youth tsunamis are causing a giant shift on political axes, and will cause permanent political and social restructuring that is not just limited to the Middle East and North Africa.

While I can’t claim to be an expert on these movements, I want to offer my perspective, as a social entrepreneur working with diverse youth groups across Kenya.

Kenya has some things disturbingly similar to our northern neighbors Tunisia, Libya and Egypt:

1. A huge youth population,a massive economic imbalance, coupled with
2. A culture of impunity, and
3. A culture of complicity in corruption, as well as
4. Politicians who are reticent to yield power (“entrenched regimes” is my new favorite term)

In the image below, all the countries experiencing revolution in North Africa and the Middle East are in light or dark orange; their average youth age 20-30. All the yellow ones, including Kenya? Median age 14-20. Sub-Saharan Africa take note: a youth tsunami is coming, and we must work now to make it a force for good.

Youth Demographics

Kenyan youth are for the most part as literate as their revolutionary counterparts (92% literacy according to UNESCO as compared to 71% for Sub-Saharan Africa, and versus eg. Libya 100%, Tunisia 97%, Egypt 85%) but experience greater unemployment. However, the average for Sub-Saharan Africa is 71%.

Plus, Kenyan youth have more experience in violent protest. Our youth were the ones who raped and maimed and evicted and murdered in 2008, funded by leading politicians, many of whom have been implicated in past large corruption scandals, none of whom has ever been convicted for any wrongdoings, and five of whom are being taken to court by the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Hague.

Above: Youth Literacy Rate.   Below: Rates of Unemployment

In my next blog I’ll break out the other three contributing factors I see to creating a destructive youth tsunami, and what I see happening in Kenya.

Below are just some of the many places we have gone to and recommend. If you have any recommendations for us, please send them to us through the Contact Us page. Check back here from time to time as we’ll update these. Also search our site for the book title as we may have blogs on the specific books.

Books
• The World is as You Dream It, by John Perkins – great insight into how our collective cultural values/dreams form the world in which we live, and how re-visioning what we want to see in the world is necessary
• When We Ruled, by Robin Walker – History is written by those who gained power, and this is a great history of Africa that you may not have realized
• The Secret History of the American Empire, John Perkins – what exactly has America done around the world to influence governments and economies? find out, especially if you’re an American trying to do good around the world, it’s helpful. The Ugly American is also probably the first (1958) book on How to Be a Social Entrepreneur
• Forces for Good: The Six Practices of High-Impact Nonprofits by Leslie Crutchfield and Heather McLeod Grant – shows the importance of non-profits to be self-sustaining and to combine grass-roots work with policy advocacy for lasting change
• The World is Flat, by Thomas L. Friedman – takes a look at the role of technology in changing global dynamics
• The Bottom Billion: Why the poorest countries are failing and what can be done about it, by Paul Collier – a good insight from an economist into the people we should be focusing on in development and why
• The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating poverty through profits, by C.K. Prahalad – an economic justification why it is important to create markets for the poor and offer dignity through choice, and how that can be profitable to a company

Social Enterprise
Organizations that support social enterprise
Echoing Green: http://www.echoinggreen.org/
Skoll Foundation: http://www.skollfoundation.org/
Ashoka: http://www.ashoka.org/
TED: http://www.ted.com/

Websites on funding social enterprise
Root Capital: http://www.rootcapital.org/
Eleos Foundation: http://theeleosfoundation.com/
Acumen Fund: http://www.acumenfund.org/
Grass Roots Business Fund: http://www.gbfund.org/

Some of the reports and references mentioned in this website

• Gender Policy in Education, Ministry of Education, July 2007. www.education.go.ke
• Vision 2030, Government of Kenya
• What Works in Girls Education: Evidence and Policies from the Developing World, Barbara Herz and Gene B. Sperling, Council on Foreign Relations, 2004
• Final Report on the Impact of Feminine Hygiene on Girls Participation in Education in Kenya, May 2008. Forum for African Women Educationalists-Kenya Chapter

Check back here later, because we’re going to reorganize into categories (social enterprise, girls education and empowerment, menstruation, African history and global dynamics, seeing America differently) which will include books, website links, and movie recommendations. This takes a bit of time to get everything out of our heads so it can get into yours!

Are you a social entrepreneur or reading information about the topic? What are your favorite resources?

ZanaA is founded on many theories of change. Here are some of them.

1. Small self-sustainability initiatives take nearly the same effort to manage as larger ones, and larger ones solve problems for more people while making more money for a non-profit – a major national or international company could be just an extrapolation of an income-generating activity for a savvy non-profit and can create an endowment through the profits

2. There is no reason not to make profit by doing good, if done in the right way

3. Non-profits were essentially created as a reaction against single-minded for-profit motives in the industrial revolution, and we are now seeing a convergence of for-profits and non-profits with an emphasis on a triple bottom line (David Bornstein has a nice section about this in How to Change the World)

4. Charities should be working themselves out of jobs by doing things right. We are redefining charity to be more savvy and accountable

5. Manufacturing – not cottage industry – is necessary to achieve scale, and to leverage eco-friendly energy alternatives to help see Africa become the next centre for industry. There is a reason why the West doesn’t do cottage industry, and it makes no sense to encourage it for Africa

6. Leveraging agricultural waste products makes good economic sense and is good earth stewardship

7. Realizing a world where green products become the normal price point not the high-end price will result in a much healthier world

8. Kenyan women don’t want to manufacture pads per se but want to have financial resources to do what they see best in their villages – training in cottage industry can be another way the west imposes solutions on others

9. Sanitary pads are arguably the smallest investment to make the largest societal change in the short- and long-term

10. Even with sanitary pads, the challenges of adolescence are so great, especially for girls in circumstances of poverty, that psycho-social investment is vital to foster a positive self-image and to support healthy decision-making and maximize the investment made in sanitary pads

11. Real change takes real commitment and years of not sowing seeds and not seeing much fruit, it requires staying the course in the face of tremendous adversity but is the most rewarding things we could ever hope to be a part of.

Tell me your thoughts – do you agree? Disagree? Why?

If you like this blog you may like another blog of mine, “D.I.Y Foreign Aid for Dummies”

This week we join The Girl Effect by bringing the internet to girls in Kibera!

As part of ZanaA’s commitment to creating pioneering blue-print models to break cycles of poverty, ZanaA is piloting after-school EmpowerNet Clubs. Bringing a backpack of laptops and netbooks to schools, girls will access the internet in groups of 4 using a bespoke platform on this website.

Through this program, girls will access empowering resources online and find and amplify their voices through blogging and tweeting. They will learn other valuable skills such as typing, photography, videography, and using browser-enabled phones.

STARTING THIS WEDNESDAY, 12th January, you can be a part of this cutting-edge program. Sign up by email or phone to volunteer one, two, or more days this week for our exciting training. In a secure location for people and their cars right off Kibera Drive, we will be hosting 100 girls to train them on computer and internet basics. We invite you to come with your laptop, and sit with your laptop and 4 girls, and help them to walk through our fun training program to make sure they’re understanding.

Wednesday 12 January 2pm-5pm
Thursday 13 January 2pm-5pm
Friday 14 January 2pm-5pm
Saturday 15 January 8:30am-4pm
Saturday 22 January 8:30am-4pm

This is a unique way to get a safe introduction to Kibera, to get an intimate interaction with a small number of school girls, and to use something you may take for granted – your laptop – in a way that is transformative for others, and to have fun!

WE NEED AT LEAST 6 VOLUNTEERS EACH DAY WITH THEIR LAPTOPS TO MAKE THE TRAINING SUCCESSFUL. Please come for at least one afternoon, and take a moment now to share this with family, friends, colleagues, and acquaintances you know who might be interested. We guarantee you’ll have an unforgettable time.

I’ll be there every day, and I’d love to see you.

To sign up, please contact the volunteer coordinator:
Sarah Meyer
PR & Communication Officer
0738500792
sarah at zanaafrica dot org

Thereafter, you can come and visit an EmpowerNet Club, any day Monday-Friday 2:30-5pm in a different school each day. Saturdays 10am-4pm you can interact with girls in our drop-in center at our Kibera Olympic Office.

UPDATE: Our first day was such fun. For more photos, please click here

For most of us, I think that while we sometimes are rather anxious when we don’t have our work to do in front of us, we would be loathe to limit ourselves to one definition. For myself, founding my own organization has been the out-working of an inner journey, and I have certainly put my heart and soul into ZanaA. Yet, I am also an avid photographer and cook, a voracious reader, and relationally a daughter and sister – and now wife.

So why do we label sex workers as only that? Do we think about the mom who left an abusive relationship and is trying to put bread on the table for her young children, who comes home and tucks her children into bed? Do we think about the teenager who is trying to support an invalid mom and to send several dependent siblings to school? Do we think of her hopes and aspirations? Do we think of her as having dignity, and human rights like we have? Do we think of her as we think of our own mom?

Tomorrow we honor sex workers with an international day to end violence against them. There are many complex factors involved in sex work, but one thing they must all be given is safety from harm. What you may not know is that prostitutes are responsible about their health – a recent study in Kenya found 92% knew their HIV status. However, their clients are not responsible.

A recent study of sex workers in Kibera slum, where ZanaA works, found that of 161 prostitutes interviewed, in an average of 30% of sexual acts male clients refused to wear a condom and could be abuse if pushed or refused (20% of these acts were with a prostitute who was HIV+ – she was not trying to protect herself alone but to protect him). Common reactions by men who are soliciting for sex, when asked to use a condom, are rape, burning women’s genitals with cigarettes, or worse. Girls are at greater risk for many reasons, but are futher impaired by reduced negotiating skills when trying to handle older men.

The clients are not the only ones complicit in this abuse. Prostitutes point to police and law officials as “the main source and cause of the brutality they are experiencing.” It is this brutality and the discrimination by the society that is making it difficult for prostitutes to come out and share their tribulations. Society is you and me. Do we really love this woman, our neighbor, as we are called to do? If we see her on the street at night, do we glare with contempt or do our eyes speak of warmth and our heart whisper a prayer of support to God for her and her family? Are we someone she could come to if she were in trouble?

Let me note: You don’t have to be a sex worker to experience sexual violence. At Harvard, I had two upstanding, talented friends from respectable families who had been raped by their boyfriends during high school, sometimes repeatedly, and felt they had nowhere to turn or were too afraid of the boy to speak up. I had another friend who was being recruited on wall street and, on a night out with the boys, was ruffied and raped. My own sister, at college, was slipped a ruffie, but thankfully her female friends saw her symptoms and took her home.

Violence against women exists in every walk of life, every town and city. It is shrouded in shame, self-doubt and silence, which makes the perpetrators more powerful than they should be. Prostitutes, for instance, because of the stigma against them are unable to access support systems. Said one woman who is my age and a mother of two:

“Many of us feel the society does not love us… if you love and appreciate our human rights, then we are likely to have self-esteem and listen to what the society is saying.”                                         The Daily Nation, 14 December 2010

I have some great friends. Some of them are sex workers. Some of them are children of sex workers. Some of them work to help sex workers. Some of them are survivors of gender-based violence.

This holiday, lets wash the windows of ignorance in our hearts and minds to see clearly just who is our neighbor and what it takes to love them truly.

Take Action

This holiday, you can take action to help girls break out of the cycle of poverty, abuse, and prostitution.

Here are a few simple ways:

• Rally: Show up in Nairobi, 17 December 2010, for a walk to support the rights of sex workers – it’ll be a powerful day of marching, dance, spoken word, testimonies, and action
• Read: A great book by my friend Zawadi, When I dare to be powerful: On the road to a sexual rights movement in East Africa (click the title for a downloadable pdf)
• Listen: Hear the short, personal story of a prostitute in South Africa: Life by Thandiwe
• Rewind the clock: – watch our partner The Girl Effect’s latest video: the clock is ticking for girls (below)
• Donate: Give girls a chance to stay in school and avoid prostitution – get involved in our Forever550 campaign yourself or with friends and family.

The Girl Effect: The Clock is Ticking