Maji Mazuri

Restaurant Het Zalmhuis has supported Duara Foundation in organising a fundraise dinner for three years in a row. This time a team of its employees will run the Rotterdam Marathon on 11 April 2010 and 'Het Zalmhuis will sponsor this endeavour. We are very grateful and seek more sponsors of this team. If YOU want want to sponsor their great effort to support Duara YOU can email: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

An intelligent, articulate champion for social justice, Naomi is a fearless warrior for the less fortunate. As a PhD researcher at the University of Amsterdam she focuses on ethnic violence in slum communities such as Mathare Valley, a shanty town on the outskirts of Nairobi, Kenya.

Her journey into an unchartered realm began in 1989 when she met Dr. Wanjiku Kironyo, director of Maji Mazuri, and 6 youth from Mathare Valley, the second largest slum in East Africa. The group had been invited to participate in a conference on alternative didactic methodologies in the Netherlands. As part of their contribution to the conference the youth did a drama about their lives dealing with trauma's in the slums, a desolate and debilitating place. In a place murred with crime, prostitution and exploitation, the youth live on the constant brink of danger. The absolute extremes and the rawness that characterise Mathare are overwhelming, stigmatizing even cripling to the residents.

Naomi and her twin brother, Saul, spent lots of time with the youth while they were in Holland, showing them around and introducing them to the Dutch culture. The next year, 1990, she and Saul visited their new friends in Kenya. This was the start of a friendship and working relationship that now already has been going on for years.

Her experience working with Maji Mazuri Center and the youth in Mathare Valley changed her life, turning her from a rebillious difficult teen into a transformational leader.  Today she is a teacher, anthropologist and researcher with a passion for youth empowerment. She has been working with troubled teens in Mathare for the last 20 years and visited Kenya more than 16 times. She is committed to finding solutions for a stigmatized population and shares her strength with tremendous compassion and passion.

She is the founder of Duara Foundation (www.duara.org), an international partner to Maji Mazuri’s Education and Talent Program that currently guides 550 youth to a better future. Duara proposes a more dynamic and reciprocal form of international development cooperation and through this it hopes to contribute to a more equal world.  Naomi and her board members raised over $226 000 in less than a year towards a new community center in the heart of Mathare valley. The center will include a library, internet cafe, academic institution including a head start program for toddlers and clinic. For a child in Mathare valley, access to these  type of resources is transformational. She is devoted to supporting bottom-up, local community projects, believing people themselves are able to determine their own route to socio-economic empowerment but sometimes lack the means to do so.

Naomi overcame a debilitating shyness, channeling her initial challenges with leadership into service and the strength to confront social injustice. Her personal story demonstrates that fortitude is built from ferver and heartfelt passion. She has had the tenacity to push through hardship and formidable obstacles, pushing tirelessly to make quality of life accessible to powerful people the world seems to have forgotten.  Naomi has the uncanny ability to connect with your thoughts and a gift for communicating with people across of lines of color, creed and class.

She overflows with energy and devotes intense caring to fighting on behalf of a disempowered neighbor’s causes. With a powerful multicultural mindset, she shows through action that changing the world is not just an occupation, its a way of life.

One of Maji Mazuri’s most recent ardent supporters is Jacquie Berg. Co-founder of 2Family.org, Jacquie has been recognized in the past year in Signature LA magazine as the Top 40 Under 40 Making a Difference and 2008’s Who’s Who Among Executive and Professional Women.

2Family.org has made it easy for anyone, anywhere, anytime to improve a child's life by removing the distance that alienates struggling children from the world’'s generosity.  For Jacquie, what is truly important in life is improving other people’s lives.

“Technology has revolutionized the world; new things are possible every day and simplifying giving back has joined the revolution!” says Jacquie

After living in Africa for 2 months as a contestant on CBS’s “Survivor”  Jacquie now commits her time to social good. 2Family.org  works with youth from all over the world challenged by extraordinary circumstances such as homelessness, violence, addictions, disorders, and unstable living situations.

“All they need extra motivation to break a cycle of struggle, to dream bigger and to reach their full potential,” Jacquie says.

To partner with Jacquie, 2family.org and Maji Mazuri visit inspire a child

The global community we are living in today requires extraordinary figures to take extraordinary action. For Sara Feldman, that mandate builds upon a lifetime spent championing shared economic prosperity through robust transatlantic relationships. At age 17, she went on a mission trip to Tanzania where she spent a summer helping to help build a school outside of Arusha. She returned to Africa on a study abroad program traveling through rural and urban Kenya in a series of placements and internships.

After completing her undergraduate degree in Dramatic writing, and a brief unfulfilling stint as a screen writer, she applied to Columbia where she was drawn to the International Social Welfare program. While in school she sought volunteer experience. She reconnected with contacts in Kenya and decided to work with Abila Creative, making films that document the stories of women and children in Kisumu.

"A friend and I packed everything we could to take back," she says. "People generously sent in donations. We had 350 pounds of camcorders and cameras."

Thus began the highly eventful trip back to Africa. Within two days of landing in Nairobi, the capital city of Kenya, they were huddled in a matatu, the local public transportation minivan, on the bumpy trip to Kisumu, a small town in Western Kenya.

They focused on finding out what issues were going on the community, from the perspective of people. The answers ranged from lack of role models to poor sanitation, induction into prostitution and young people oppression. The root cause was clear - poverty. Sara understood that lack of resources, not ability or intelligence, was the real reason behind the stunted progress of the people in these communities and vowed to do something about it.

Hence was borne Voices for Umoja.

Voices for umoja (voices) is dedicated to using various forms of communication and action to create change at the community level and beyond. Voices strives to connect groups and individuals with the goal of strengthening our global community.

Voices has recently partnered with Maji Mazuri to give young people the opportunity to use media to voice their thoughts, feelings, ideas, and experiences. Using donated video and still camera equipment, Voices is starting a group dialogue amongst youth in Kenya and Los Angeles using the internet, photography, and video.

To learn more about how you can give involved in the dialogue and help visit Voices at VoicesforUmoja.org.

 

And Jump-start a broad, global system in micro-building.

It's Simple.

Give $10 and invite 10 people to give $10 each.

 

 

See, a little can make a world of difference!

 

 

You can stop the bullet!

Yay,

Spring is here and Maji Mazuri is gearing up to introduce all kinds of exciting new opportunities to particpate in global change online and in your neighborhood.

Nothing helps create global change better than a movement of brilliant like-minded people. We want you. We've created an incredible, brand new website and invite you to become part of our community. Check out www.majimazuri.org to see what Maji Mazuri is doing to help change the lives of people in Mathare Valley and all over THE WORLD.

If you want to become a part of this powerful groundswell please join our network. All it takes is the click of a button.

 

Pass on the news by emailing friends, family and co-workers and posting the link to your Facebook, Twitter and other social network accounts. All of us here really need your help spreading the word about Maji Mazuri and our mission.

Get others connected and contributing to this profound 21st Century Movement. Keep an eye out for more Maji Mazuri updates about new opportunities to make a difference, videos, interviews and news. All these exciting additions will be arriving soon.

We look forward to hearing all of your comments online and meeting you in person at our events this season.

Thank you!

Warmest regards,

Wandia & The Maji Mazuri Web Team

Join our community: www.majimazuri.org

Follow us on Twitter: www.twitter.com/majimazuri or Find us on  Facebook

Since we launched our appeal for funds to help the members of Maji Mazuri who lost their homes and/or their businesses in the riots that occurred after the disputed general elction held at the end of December, people have responded very generously from all over the world. We received several donations of $1,000, and many smaller gifts, including $27 from a young girl of 8 who sent us her pocket money.

To-date we have raised over $22,000, and all of these funds have been sent to Kenya where they are being distributed by Wanjiku Kironyo and her team to the victims of the violence. A big “thank you” to everyone who contributed so generously!

Our farm in Kiserian is now the proud owner of a new cow barn and chicken house which have been generously funded by the Rotary Club of Dayton Ohio! The first 300 chickens are due to arrive in June and several cows are being purchased through Heifer International.

 

For almost 20 years St. Paul’s Anglican Church in Edmonton Canada has been sending funds to Maji Mazuri in Kenya. What started in a small way in 1988 with the proceeds from craft sales run by several helping hands, has recently grown tremendously.

A couple of years ago the Church decided to include Maji Mazuri among its official ministries and total funds raised jumped from $19,700 in 2005 to over $55,200 in 2006. In 2007 the Highbury Foundation very generously provided the Church with $77,500 for Maji Mazuri projects – $27,500 to equip our Upper Matasia School with a borehole and pump, and $50,000 to provide capital for the Maji Mazuri Mavuno micro business loan program which operates in the Mathare Valley slum area of Nairobi.

Meanwhile, last December, the parishioners of St. Paul’s raised $39,000 in a Christmas appeal to fund the purchase of a tractor for our farm in Kiserian. All in all in 2007 St. Paul’s and the Highbury Foundation sent $145,800 to Maji Mazuri in Kenya. This wonderful achievement is having a huge impact on the quality of life and well being of many children and families in Upper Matasia, Kiserian and the Mathare Valley.

Everyone involved with Maji Mazuri is deeply grateful to the Highbury Foundation and to the many members of St. Paul’s Anglican Church in Edmonton who have given so freely and faithfully to our programs.