We are dedicated to enhancing access to education, entrepreneurship, and employment opportunities for the vulnerable groups in the Kibera slum. Our vision is for a society that is well-informed, proactive, self-sustaining, respects human rights, and where everyone has equal access to quality education, healthcare, and food.
Kibera slum, in Nairobi, Kenya, is Africa’s largest urban slum, housing over half a million people across just 2.5 square kilometers. Entire families live on less than $2 per day in densely crowded shanty houses, with no sanitation services, prevalent crime and high rates of HIV infection. We are a hand up (not a handout) organization dedicated to helping the children, youth, men and women from the most impoverished backgrounds through education as we believe it is the most effective tool in fighting the poverty that inflicts the residents of Kibera. With a good education in all its different forms, we believe people can go on to make a sustainable positive impact on their lives - and the lives of those around them.
Education sponsorship
Providing access to high-quality high school and tertiary education to extremely needy children from impoverished backgrounds in the Kibera slum. Students gain the knowledge and skills necessary to get a well-paying job, which is the difference between a reasonably comfortable life and a harsh existence under poverty.
Youth Empowerment
The project supports the youth of Kibera through hands-on skills through the Future ‘Poa’ project. The project focuses on digital literacy, tailoring, peanut butter production, and creative arts as avenues to impart the employable skills. The project aims at reducing the massive employment gap in the slum.
Economic Empowerment
Since 2012, the project has provided socio-economic empowerment to the women of Kibera.Recently, the male counterparts have joined the project which is now implemented through the Savings and Internal Lending Communities (SILC) project, which provides access to business training, microfinance and support for small business start-up and development.
Our Founder’s Story
Through being gifted an education, Tommy was able to lift himself out of poverty. Now it is his mission to help others do the same.
Growing up in the Kibera slum, Tommy was brought up in a family that was not able to pay for his high school education. Ultimately, Tommy gave up all hope of completing his high school education… until an encounter with an old Irish traveler changed the course of his life forever. Upon a brief introduction and meeting Tommy’s parents, the stranger offered to pay for his entire high school education. Tommy proceeded to university, after which he devoted his life to paying forward the gift of education to as many vulnerable children, youth, women, and men living under impoverished conditions in the Kibera slum. Tommy never got the stranger’s name, met him again nor had any form of contact with him. His hope is that by supporting as many people as he can through Mirror of Hope, he can continue to pay back the kindness he was once shown, creating new opportunities.
Tommy Nyawir
FOUNDER