Kenyan NGO gets global acclaim for slum community work
Shining Hope for Communities (Shofco founder) and CEO Dr Kennedy Odede with community members in Mukuru kwa Njenga slums, Nairobi. Shofco Mathare Clinic is the winner of this year’s global prestigious Excellence in Leadership in Family Planning award.
What you need to know:
- Shofco was sampled alongside Mumbai-based CORO and Youth for Unity and Voluntary Action as well as Ubuntu Pathway.
- Founded in 2004, Shofco is now a grassroots movement that has impacted over 2.5 million slum dwellers in Kenya.
Kibra-based non-governmental organisation Shining Hope for Communities (Shofco) has received global recognition for becoming a model in championing community-driven change.
The organisation, which employs over 800 people in 15 counties in Kenya and set to expand to up to 30, emerged among four top organisations in the world that have experienced great success through ground up, community-driven change.
This followed a study conducted by Bridgespan Group, a renowned US organisation that provides management consulting to nonprofits and philanthropists.
The survey looked at on-the-ground approaches that make the Kenyan organisation deliver identifying five mutually reinforcing mindsets that help orient these NGOs around community members’ priorities and lived experiences.
Shofco was sampled alongside Mumbai-based CORO and Youth for Unity and Voluntary Action as well as Ubuntu Pathways, which works in South Africa’s Gqeberha (formerly Port Elizabeth) townships.
Founded in 2004 by its CEO Dr Kennedy Odede as a way of uplifting his community after growing up in poverty in Kibera slums, Shofco is now a grassroots movement that has impacted over 2.5 million slum dwellers in Kenya through various causes such access to health, water, community advocacy platforms, education and leadership development for women and girls.
Shofco Urban Network (SUN), a grassroots movement that brings together individuals and households through social groups, is the key pillar of the ogransation that ensures community-driven change is achieved.
There are more than two million SUN members in Kenya. SUN also has a Sacco that is rapidly growing while also serving a platform where slum residents come together to share ideas and what needs to be done in the community by the private sector and government.
Over the years, SUN has worked closely with the slum population in bringing change to the community through provision of critical services such as education, health, counselling and food distribution, while assisting the local administration in issues such as addressing Gender-Based Violence (GBV), Nyumba Kumi Initiative, National Census and Covid-19 pandemic.
It is not just these success stories that Bridgespan Group was interested in, but rather how they were achieved.
Dr Odede has been a champion of community-led change, believing that it is pointless to attempt to lift slum dwellers if the beneficiaries are not involved.
“We can no longer afford to live in a world of aid workers and beneficiaries. We must recognise the talents that exist in marginalised communities and unlock this potential to drive durable social change,” Dr Odede said in a past forum.
He has been on the forefront of those out to ensure philanthropy is decolonised by encouraging donors and private sector to start working with grassroots organisations.
It is for this reason that Shofco stood out among the other NGOs around the world with Bridgespan concluding that their model of community-driven change has achieved impact that lasts because the community feels a sense of ownership.
Indeed, Shofco, which has a cutting-edge water treatment facility in the slums that can pump up to 300,000 litres of water at a time, two tuition-free schools for girls in Kibera and Matahre plus seven clinics attending to over 600 patients a day at near zero cost, has won over community members who are now the protectors of these critical assets.
