“Our environment, the world in which we live and work, is a mirror of our attitudes and expectations.” – Earl Nightingale

I love this photo for so many reasons. The two biggest ones are:

1. Every single person in this photo is laughing or smiling.
2. It presents a different discourse about Mathare- one of joy, laughter, friendship, and teamwork.

How often do we look at news articles, blog posts, and other media, only to see Mathare described in negative ways? We see the same words used over and over again: desolation, rape, crime, poverty, depression, sewage, gloom, and more.

What if we change the way we talk about places like Mathare? What if, instead of focusing on the negatives, we start to think about what the community has to offer?

During the Leadership Institute Program training, we talk about the power of high expectations and the effects of self-fulfilling prophecies. When you surround yourself with negative messaging about a community, that’s what you’ll see. But when you look for treasures, you’ll find them- creativity, resilience, humor, determination, passion, and vision at every turn in the community.

Our Leadership Institute Program is centered around these beliefs and practices. While others cast Mathare in a negative light, we are driven by the idea that there’s much more to this community than what’s commonly portrayed by the media. When you believe these positive messages is when real change begins.

Photo by Vanessa Johnston

“Leadership is about using yourself as an instrument to get things done. It can be learned, but only if you are willing and able to engage in serious self-development” – Linda Hill, from Being the Boss: The 3 Imperatives for Becoming a Great Leader

The first day of the Dignitas Project Leadership Institute is always like the first day of school. We’re slightly disorganized, apprehensive, and excited. We’re curious about the others who will be our classmates and colleagues for the next three weeks.

What will we learn? What’s going to take place? How will we change?

The truth is, no one really knows what the Leadership Institute, or LI as we fondly call it, will be like until they go through the experience.

Our first day is generally a slower one, easing Mathare teachers into a different environment, setting clear expectations and norms, and establishing an understanding of leadership and how we situate ourselves as leaders in our schools and daily lives.

Executive Director Tiffany Cheng Nyaggah opens up the day with an introduction to the Leadership Institute Program and a discussion of leadership.

Project Officer Fred Otieno and Program Assistant Rose Kavuli lead our teachers in an introduction exercise.

Everyone looks excited to be making new friends!

The LI fellows take turns introducing one another

LI is about leadership development. Here, fellows spend time reflecting silently on their self-development and team-development goals and visions

Tiffany leads a discussion on teaching roles and responsibilities.

In preparation for the extensive readings ahead, Program Director Martina Amoth facilitates a session on effective reading and study skills.

The first day is always a challenging one. Teachers walk away with assignments and expectations that will stretch them beyond what they’re used to. But it’s also an exciting one, especially for us at Dignitas, because we know that the next three weeks will be life-changing- it always is for us too.

The first day I started interning at Dignitas Project two and a half months ago, I was tasked with planning, thinking about, and occasionally agonizing over a new project designed to offer Mathare students between the ages of 3 and 15 the opportunity to take free art lessons.

I was pulled into a meeting with Art Without Borders Kenya representative James Mbuthia and told to take notes. What I found was an inspiring organization run by James and his team of talented (and renowned) Kenyan artists, dedicated to incubating artistic creativity in children around Kenya. In addition to working with students in informal settlements, Art Without Borders offers free art lessons for children at Kenyatta National Hospital and Dagoretti Children’s Centre. During the whirlwind meeting, it was decided that Art Without Borders would generously provide all the paper, crayons, pastels, pencils, rubbers, and art teachers required to occupy (and sometimes corral) 40 students for two hours each week.

 The intention for this project was to bring together Mathare children and encourage them to draw, color, and create works of art that they could be proud of. During my many (and sometimes abstract) discussions with James about art, he never downplayed the importance of color. “If you look out of the window on an airplane,” he said during one of our initial meetings, “if you get high enough in the air, you can’t see structures anymore.  Not houses or buildings or people. Just blocks of color.” In a world constantly dictated by lessons, homework and grades, it’s sometimes nice to just color.

I set to work. After almost a month and a half of collecting lists of students, following up with head teachers, visiting schools, typing, typing some more, organizing, and completing all sorts of miscellany, excitement and apprehensiveness accompanied my first art lesson.  Appropriately, on our first day of class, James and his teachers poured out pencils of every color imaginable on the tables. I watched as the 9-year-olds’ eyes grew huge and their fingers reached eagerly for paper and anything else that could be used as a vehicle for all those beautiful colors.

After the directions had been given in Kiswahili and the children had started, James explained that he had told them to draw something familiar. I was admittedly surprised when pictures started appearing with every square centimeter of space covered in color: green elephants and purple clouds and patchwork quilts of grass and roofs.  Seeing the astonished look on my face, James took me aside and told me in a low voice, “Not all of these children will become artists but creativity is never wrong.”

At the end of the class, the pictures were plastered on the side of the tent for the children to see and comment on as James gathered their creators around to discuss.  Giggles, gasps, and whispers rose up out of the crowd when they saw what they and their classmates were capable of.  A tent that so often hosted a stage for teacher trainings and serious discussions about pedagogy and methodology transformed into an art gallery full of color and creativity. And, to use James’s words, that’s never wrong.

- Meagan Nouhra

Meagan Nouhra is a current intern at Dignitas Project.

This week, we are working with upper primary teachers and training them on the Reading to Learn methodology. The morning started out with Program Assistant Rose Kavuli discussing expectations and norms with attendees. Teachers talked about what they want out of the training, and a timetable was agreed upon.

Instructional Coach Ann Waihura then took over with a brief explanation of the Reading to Learn methodology and the importance of being properly trained in it.

If a child cannot read, then a child cannot learn. If a child learns to read, then all subjects improve- social studies, English, Kiswahili, science, and even mathematics. When a child cannot read, then a child cannot solve math problems. There are questions like, ‘Mama Ann went to the store…’. A child cannot work out the problem if he or she cannot read.

Ann Waihura, instructional coach for Dignitas Project, introduces the Reading to Learn training to 15 teachers who are here for the week.

Rosemary, the city education officer, then took over, discussing the performance of schools in various subject areas and providing an overview of current approaches to teaching English, Kiswahili, science, and social studies in upper primary grades.

The teachers seem eager and ready to learn, and we are looking forward to an exciting week with lots of learning ahead of us!

The Dignitas Project team got a special surprise today when a poem from one of our partner schools, NECI, was dropped off at the office. NECI was a partner school in 2011 and the team is thrilled to continue the partnership into 2012.

Working in Mathare with low-resource schools, our day to day can often be exhausting and difficult, but we continue to be proud of and motivated by the incredible teachers we’re privileged to partner with and by the impact we’re slowly seeing. The poem was a wonderful highlight to the day:

APPRECIATION

1. The NECI staff enjoys lesson.

The lessons they used to teach in crisis, presently, they teach in groups and discussions.

All this in the name of dignitas project.

 

2. The techniques they implore and apply.

They are of high skills and level.

The techniques that easen and simplify.

All this in the name of dignitas project

 

3. The display of the educational charts,

The teaching materials of express magazines,

The well painted black walls.

All this in the name of dignitas project.

 

4. More so, the entanglement of the pupils.

The entanglement of guardians and parents,

And the entanglement of the community as influencers

Truly have brought tremendous improvement in all.

 

5. In conclusion, look at the good storage facilities,

In addition, look at the good stationaries,

In all, the reading and writing materials

All this in the name of dignitas project.

 

Lastly, on behalf of NECI staff and S.M.C. may I say that any further support is ceremoniously welcomed.

 

Thank you

In the end, it’s really us here at Dignitas that must thank NECI. We’re truly inspired and grateful to be learning from and working with schools that are meeting the needs of children all over Mathare, working to create a better future for the community.

Students from NECI excitedly pose for the camera

A week ago, fire and disaster swept the Sinai slum. Over 100 were reported dead. Here at the Dignitas office, everyone was on their phones calling loved ones and friends. First, we heard that there was a bad fire in the industrial area. Then more specifically, the slum of Lunga Lunga. Finally, word came through social networks news outlets that the fire was in Sinai.

An oil spill had entered through the sewers of Sinai. This fuel came through leaky pipelines run by the Kenya Pipeline Company. As happened two years ago in February 2009 during a tragic oil tanker fire, those in the surrounding area came to collect free fuel. While the exact cause of the fire has not yet been identified, there has been speculation that the fire was caused either by a cigarette or by garbage fires that are commonly burned in the city.

Regardless, the very fact that this oil spill occurred in a slum already placed Sinai at greater risk. Fires in slums are very common, given the number of open fires, the proximity of homes, and the fact that homes are easily flammable. Given how densely packed slums tend to be and the general lack of opportunity for jobs, it’s unsurprising that so many people came to collect fuel for the opportunity to sell later on.

To me, the real tragedy of this situation is that there are so many factors that could have been avoided. With better pipeline maintenance and infrastructure, the oil leakage would not have occurred. With more economic opportunity for residents, perhaps there would have been less of a rush for free fuel. Better housing would have prevented homes from being placed right next to sewers, therefore decreasing the number of casualties.

And of course, perhaps saddest are the young lives that were taken in this fire. For there is not only a lack of economic opportunity in slums, but also a lack of educational opportunity. The fire occurred during school hours, but there were many children in the area, not in school at the time, who perished.

There are a lot of lessons to be learned from Sinai. For me the question is, “What can we do to keep this from happening again?” This is why it is important to work with the community to create better opportunity and access. If there’s anything that Sinai showed us, it’s the injustice and inequality that can exist, and that we need to do something to change it.