Lucy, a 12-year-old girl at one of the many informal schools in Nairobi’s Mathare slum, stays home when she has her monthly period because she is worried she won’t be able to contain the bleeding and will bring shame on herself. She is just one of thousands of girls from Nairobi’s sprawling slums — and …
Jane Otai, a 2013 New Voices Fellow at the Aspen Institute, says that it is good that the Kenyan government will now provide free maternity health care for all its citizens, however it is also imperative to ensure that free care equals quality care. The New York Times recently reported on the astonishingly high cost …
Nairobi – My mother, like her mother, her grandmother, and so on, was born into poverty in the rural village of Rarieda, Kenya. I, too, was born in the village, and lived there until it was struck by a brutal famine when I was two years old. With no food, money, or opportunities, my mother …
Whatever you put your heart and mind on, you can achieve and that poverty cannot be fought without the involvement of the poor. On this edition of unsung heroes, Resian Lebai tells the story of Kennedy Odede the 28-year-old founder of a community based organization that helps to uplift the poor.
INTERVIEW By Bradley Parks Kenya's infant mortality shows the fastest rate of decline among the 20 countries in sub-Sahara Africa, according to the World Bank. Among the possible reasons for this decline are the efforts of public health workers like Aspen Institute's 2013 New Voices Fellow Jane Otai, and targeted new public health projects such …