Africa
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Africa 〰️
From the margins, you see the centre most clearly. I went to Kenya in 2016 carrying that knowledge with me, and looking for it in someone else's story.
No fixed itinerary, no agenda. Just an open schedule, curious eyes, and one question I couldn't quite articulate yet: what does community actually look like when it has to be built from scratch?
Europe has a word for it. We use it constantly. I'm not sure we always know what it means.
I ended up in the villages of Jaribuni and Ukunda through two non-profit foundations, Germano Chincherini and Child to Child for Africa, working in education, child welfare and women's empowerment across some of the most under-resourced areas of the country. What I found wasn't poverty as spectacle. It was people organizing, teaching, feeding, raising children together, doing collectively what no one could do alone.
That, I recognized.
The Child to Child for Africa Foundation has been operating in Jaribuni, a rural village in Kilifi County, focusing on poverty reduction, education, food support and health promotion across four local communities. The intervention includes placing children in schools through distance adoption, women's empowerment meetings, hygiene education and income-generating initiatives with parents.
What I observed there: large families, often led by a single parent, navigating scarcity with a kind of pragmatic solidarity, stayed with me longer than any statistic could.
Founded in 2011 in Ukunda, the Mama Lorenza's Vocational Center works on female empowerment and psychological support in a safe environment, providing professional education for young women with challenging backgrounds. Around 70 students pass through every year; 12 local people are employed there.
The two-year program covers tailoring, leather processing, hairdressing, cosmetics, computer science, management and cooking. Students tend the center's garden, contribute to bread production and chicken breeding, and sell their work through an in-house showroom and salon. Each student receives counseling sessions focused on autonomy and decision-making.
At the end of two years, they sit an exam. They leave with a diploma, and with something harder to name but easier to recognize.
JARIBUNI VILLAGE
MAMA LORENZA’S VOCATIONAL CENTER
In 2008, the Germano Chincherini Foundation opened the first block of "Nyumba ya Watoto 1”, House of Children, in Ukunda, a semi-rural village in Kwale County near Diani Beach. The project supports children who have lost their parents, housing them in small family units of 8 to 10, each with a house mother who raises, nourishes and educates them on a monthly salary from the Foundation.
Each home has electricity, running water, separate rooms for boys and girls. A courtyard, gardens, a communal kitchen. A football pitch, volleyball and basketball courts donated by a private sponsor. A vegetable garden, called shamba, tended by the children themselves when not at school, the harvest shared across all homes.
From time to time, the Foundation organizes gatherings between the children and their birth parents. The children prepare songs, dances, acrobatic performances. They show what they've learned. Their parents come, when they can.
GERMANO CHINCHERINI FOUNDATION
