Our Team
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James Bundi
Community Programs Manager
James is the Community Programs Manager at Shining Hope. He manages the different departments that exist within the community center, including economic empowerment, the gender department, youth department, information department, and water and sanitation. Part of his role is supporting, helping, and training the different department heads in how best to manage their projects. His goal is to assist them in creating sustainable projects. James was born, raised, and educated in Kibera; he feels like his background gives him legitimacy while assisting the community. Kibera residents can relate to him and there is a level of mutual understanding. Before coming to Shining Hope, James spent a lot of time with other community organizations in Kibera, gaining experience with community organizing and project development. For James, the best part of his job is the focus on economic empowerment because it is the key to overall sustainability. James enjoys setting up group savings and loans and teaching business skills. He believes that economic empowerment is what allows for health care access, food security, and educational opportunities. Outside of work James enjoys having adventures and socializing, and loves being an emcee! James hopes to see Shining Hope expand to other communities in Kibera and other slums in Nairobi. He wants to see Kibera become a transformed and self-reliant community.
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Caroline Atieno
Clinic Operations Manager
Caroline is the Clinic Operations Manager of the Johanna Justin-Jinich Community Clinic. This position means that Caroline oversees most aspects of the clinic and ensures that all is in order. She also works on HIV testing and counseling. She comes from Nyanza, a place with a high prevalence of HIV positive individuals and so feels strongly about working with this population. Caroline enjoys giving back to the community in this capacity. Caroline loves when she can tell somebody their HIV status and help them ‘live positively with being positive.’ Additionally, Caroline likes when she can solve conflicts within the clinic because this helps her get to know people better. Caroline finds joy outside of work in listening to gospel music, reading gospel books, traveling, and having fun with her children. She hopes to see the rate of HIV infection in Kibera reduce over the next two years. For SHOFCO, Caroline would love to see peer education surrounding reproductive and sexual health increase greatly, giving youth the knowledge to make better choices to allow them more opportunities in life..
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Abigail Higgins
Manager of Strategic Partnerships
As Manager of Strategic Partnerships, Abigail is responsible for supporting the Kenyan staff as they operate and expand Shining Hope’s programs, researching and developing program proposals and partnerships, managing the internship program and coordinating operations between Shining Hope’s United States and Kenya teams. Abigail graduated with honors from Bryn Mawr College in 2010, a women’s college that solidified her belief in the power of educating women. She majored in Political Science with a double minor in Africana Studies and Gender and Sexuality Studies. She is from just outside of Seattle, Washington and first came to Kenya when she studied abroad at University of Nairobi. Upon graduating, she received a research fellowship to return to Kenya to spend a year studying local forms of economic empowerment amongst Kenyan women. She speaks fluent Swahili and is also a writer who has been published by the Common Language Project, the Nairobi Star and The Seattle Globalist. She was recently selected to be a 2012 Glimpse Correspondent, a travel writing program sponsored in part by National Geographic.
What do you believe in? What are you inspired by?
I believe in holistic change that comes from within the community and the immense power that exists when we invest in local structures and leaders. I believe that women and girls around the world bear immense burdens, and that working to lighten those loads is the single greatest opportunity we have to change the world. I’m inspired by travel and the written word, and living in a city as dynamic and global as Nairobi. But most of all, I’m inspired by working for Shining Hope. In it, I see a model for grassroots change that respects local structures and is founded in the values and deep sense of community in Kibera.
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Jordyn Wells
Director of Strategy and Evaluation
After graduating from Bard College in 2006, Jordyn joined Do Something, a New York based national non-profit that inspires and supports young people changing the world. As Do Something’s Chief Program Officer she provided young people with the funds and training to start and grow their own community action projects and non-profit organizations managing the distribution over of 400 grants annually, including the Do Something Awards, a televised awards show on Vh1 (Jessica was the 2010 Do Something Award grand prize winner). In the fall of 2010 Jordyn left Do Something and traveled to East Africa to consult on metrics and evaluation and program development for several non-profit organizations, including Shining Hope. She currently divides her time between NYC, where she is pursing her MSW at Columbia and Kenya. Jordyn is managing the design and build out of our metrics and evaluation system, the development of our Kenyan operations and management systems and overseeing the continued development of the KSG curriculum.
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Xiaoxi Tu
Manager of Strategic Development
Xiaoxi is the Manager of Strategic Development for Shining Hope for Communities. She is responsible for researching and developing program proposals, reports, and publications, coordinating development activities between Shining Hope’s US and Kenya teams, and managing donor relations in Kenya. Prior to joining Shining Hope, Xiaoxi worked in program development at a national anti-poverty non-profit based in New York City. She also has non-profit administration experience in fields including education, the performing arts, and international relations. She graduated from Wesleyan University in 2009 with high honors, where she studied music and intellectual history.
What inspires you? What do you believe in?
“I am inspired by our courageous, curious, and creative students, and the warmth of the Kibera community. I am inspired by the knowledge that mere good intentions are not enough; we need to constantly evaluate and innovate. I believe that if we approach our work with critical honesty and analytical integrity, we can build a clearer vision for a brighter future.”
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Lydiah Salome
Finance and Human Resources Manager
Lydiah is the Finance and Human Resources Manager for Shining Hope. She received training through a Kenyan accounting course and is a CPA. Lydiah chose to pursue accounting because she loves working with figures and dealing with logic. Her favorite part of the job is balancing budgets and knowing that she has accounted for everything. Besides dealing with numbers, Lydiah enjoys music and playing games. She hopes for SHOFCO to become an international organization and hopes for the Kibera community to be in a position where they can sustain themselves and reduce their own poverty.
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Peter Okoth
Operations Manager
Peter is Shining Hope’s Operations Manager; he oversees much of what goes on with the organization and makes sure that everything runs smoothly. Peter has a serious love for computers and technology and takes it upon himself to be Shining Hope’s resident IT tech. Peter started at Shining Hope as a youth coordinator and acted as the link between Kibera youth and Shining Hope management. Peter excelled in this leadership position and proved what an asset he is to the organization. Being the Operations Manager at Shining Hope is a dream come true for Peter, as he’s always wanted to work with computers. Peter obviously loves the electronic side of his job but also immensely enjoys working with the Kibera community. He hopes to see Shining Hope become one of the biggest organizations in Kibera, providing quality education and healthcare to the community at large. He would also love to see Kibera be able to offer its residents what’s available in the rest of the country: a healthy environment with good options for education.
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Katherine Kitfield Bascom
Associate Managing Director
Katherine is Shining Hope for Communities’ Associate Managing Director. She is a native of Vermont, and a 2010 graduate of Wesleyan University. Katherine has worked in Bangladesh for programs providing agricultural grants to support women, and brings these experiences and her unwavering enthusiasm to support Shining Hope’s operations and vision. Katherine is the recipient of Wesleyan University’s Service Careers Fellowship for her dedication to community work, the Northwest Institute for Social Change’s Media Fellowship, and a prestigious post-graduate writing fellowship with Wesleyan University’s Writing Programs. She currently lives in New York City, and is also an artist, yoga teacher, and dancer.
What inspires you? What do you believe in?
“The potential that each individual has to realize and live their dreams. Each of us is capable of evolving beyond our present condition, our history, the prescribed social norms, and the mental and physical oppression in our lives. We are responsible for one another, but we must first be responsible for ourselves. Authentic change begins in the mind and spirals outward into society: changing–and challenging–yourself to choose freedom and compassion in the everyday is the first step toward overcoming injustice and oppression. My friends, family, and others out there who spend their lives fighting for a more inspired and beautiful world are a perpetual source of motivation for me, everyday.”
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George Okewa
Community Relations Manager
In Kibera, George is a well-known and respected community organizer and activist. After graduating from high school, George continued to educate himself, despite his families’ inability to afford further education. He attended seminars in community health, organizing, and development. He has organized around issues of labor injustice, unemployment, and the government’s denial of services to the people of Kibera. In 2004, George began working with Kennedy Odede to help start a grassroots organization founded and run by the people of Kibera. George has since led slum-wide sanitation and anti-violence campaigns. In 2006 George founded Kibera’s own grass-roots security organization to protect and serve residents, as the police do not work inside the slum. George’s work has received widespread acclaim, even attracting the attention of Prime Minister Raila Odinga. George believes that the uplift of women is central to changing Kenyan society and the lives of all people in Kibera. He also believes that for such change to take place men and women must work together for equality, education, and justice. He lives in Kibera with his wife and two children.
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Henry Tini Oyatsi
Health Services Manager
Dr. Henry is the Manager of Health Services at SHOFCO’s clinic. He believes that being a doctor is his calling. His mother was a nurse and the most influential person in his life. She would bring him to health clinics with her and helped develop his interest in health care. Henry saw suffering and grew to believe that he could help sick people. Dr. Henry has worked in numerous health facilities, both under the government and in the private sector. For Henry, the best part of the job is seeing patients, especially children, become healthy. Outside of the clinic Henry likes to read philosophy and history; he also enjoys sports such as martial arts and hiking. Henry’s dream is to see SHOFCO spread throughout slums in Kenya and beyond, bringing a message of hope for girls and women. He also hopes to see true development in Kibera and would love if the government took a vested interest in Kibera residents by building affordable and safe housing.
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Ann Olwande
Headmistress
Ann is the Headmistress of the Kibera School for Girls. She holds a Bachelor of Education with a focus on math and sciences. She has previously worked in a secondary school and so working at Kibera School for Girls, a primary school, has been a change. According to Ann, working at KSG has helped her to become more patient and understanding and less of a perfectionist. She says spending time with small innocent children, who tend to forget things, has humbled her. Ann spends most of her time on the management side but loves when she can teach. She enjoys teaching young children of different levels and the challenge it can present. Besides teaching, Ann loves swimming (though she finds it can be too cold in Nairobi!), singing and dancing, traveling to new places, and hiking. Ann has large dreams for SHOFCO. She believes in the impact the organization can have and wants that impact to be practical and far-reaching. She wants to see SHOFCO really affect the community genuinely in a way everyone recognizes and personally experiences. She hopes that KSG students will all be made even more incredible because of SHOFCO; she dreams that they will all recognize how SHOFCO helped them and continue to give back to their communities.
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Kennedy Odede
President and Chief Executive Officer
Kennedy is an internationally recognized community organizer. Kennedy was born and lived for twenty-three of his twenty-six years in the Kibera slum, the largest slum in Africa. As the oldest of eight children, he assumed responsibility for his family at the age of ten. The first time Kennedy ever had extra money—20 cents in 2004—he bought a soccer ball and started Shining Hope for Communities. As President & CEO of Shining Hope, Kennedy started The Kibera School for Girls, the slum’s first tuition free school for girls. Under Kennedy’s leadership Shining Hope has also opened a community health clinic, built eco-friendly toilets, and currently operates a community center from which we run extensive community programming such as health care and education outreach, gardens, gender violence support groups, microenterprise for HIV positive women, literacy/computer training, and hundreds of jobs. Kennedy is a 2010 Echoing Green Fellow, won the 2010 Dell Social Innovation Competition, wrote an Op-Ed that appeared in the New York Times, and was recently honored by President Bill Clinton. He is a senior fellow with Humanity in Action and a senior at Wesleyan University. Kennedy is twenty-seven-years-old and speaks six languages, and is one of very few people from Kibera to ever attend an accredited four-year college.
What inspires you? What do you believe in?
“I believe that the world is a mirror. In the face of terrible injustice and inequality, we must reflect to the world the change that we would like to see. Whatever we do in this world will be reflected back to us, and so we must fight and fight hard for what is right. If the world is going to change, we must recognize that we must all play our parts. It is not sustainable to live in a world where 20% of the population consumes 80% of the world’s resources. I hope that one day no other child will have to suffer as I did and I believe that as a global community we must come together to make this possible. We must never give up. There were many times in my life that I was sure I would die, that there was no hope for me, but I never allowed myself to be daunted by the great odds I faced.”
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Jessica Posner
Co-founder and Chief Operating Officer
Jessica is the co-founder of Shining Hope for Communities, a non-profit that combats extreme poverty and gender inequality in Kibera—Africa’s largest slum. Shining Hope runs the Kibera School for Girls—the slum’s first free school for girls, as well as a community health clinic, clean toilet initiative, youth and community education, and economic development initiatives. Jessica is a nationally recognized social entrepreneur and activist. She won the 2010 Do Something Award and was named “America’s top-world changer 25 and under” live on VH1. Jessica also received the prestigious Echoing Green Fellowship. She graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Wesleyan University in May 2009 with honors in African-American Studies. She is twenty-four-years-old and fluent in Swahili.
What inspires you? What do you believe in?
“Kennedy always inspires me because he fought against all odds to create remarkable change in both his community and his own life. I am always moved to action by the resilience of our students and community members who face daunting odds, but hang on to their dreams of a better life. I will never forget August 18th, 2009: the day we dedicated the Kibera School for Girls, along with the community, demonstrating a collective belief in the power of hope. I believe strongly in always cultivating awareness of the challenges in your path. Then, I believe in moving forward not in spite of, but because of these great challenges. Things happen when we keep going while everyone around us tells us to give up. I think there is magic in what others might call crazy, that there is always the possibility for rupture when we dive in headfirst, and don’t look back.”