Today Leif and I spent the day in one of the poorest slums in Nairobi, Kenya. We visited a Compassion project committed to providing education and food to those in the most desperate situations. (Click here to learn more).
At one point, I asked our leader, Rich, if everyone in the room could leave—except for the young women.
At first glance, the nearly dozen women look like your average group of teenagers and young twenty-somethings—smartly dressed, giggly, and full of life.
I longed to hear their stories—unedited, unscripted—of what it was like to grow up in a slum.
They were hesitant at first, relying on generalizations and religious clichés, but quickly shifted to honestly sharing from their own lives.
All were born in extreme poverty. The majority were orphans. Many had lost their parents to HIV. When they weren’t at school, they did their best to raise their younger siblings.
“What’s life like in the slum?” I asked.
“Unspeakable things happen,” one woman said.
In addition to the prominence of hardcore drugs, more than half of those who live in the slums resorted to selling alcohol to survive—a dangerous homebrew made from sewer water. Those who sell soon begin drinking. The result is every kind of abuse imaginable and unimaginable.
The women estimated that at least 60 percent of their friends had already been raped. I had a hunch that included some of those in the room, but hesitated to ask.
This is a place where it’s not uncommon to see girls pregnant at the age of 9. But any girl who gets pregnant and doesn’t have an abortion is thrown out of the home and inadvertently shoved into a life of prostitution.
Meanwhile, there’s no running water in the homes. Open sewer lines, often clogged with garbage, run in the middle of the street. The scent of urine, feces, body odor, and trash along with oil from fried potatoes hangs heavy in the stuffy air.
“I’ve come across kids drinking out of the open sewer with straws,” one woman said.
“What do you do when that happens?” I asked.
“Throw away the straws,” she said.
Their descriptions left me speechless.
“Let me ask you this,” I pressed. “If you could convince the Kenyan government to change anything in this slum, what would you have them change?”
My mind spun with possibilities. Close the sewers. Clean up the river. Provide fresh, clean drinking water. Pave the roads. Invest in education. Remove the garbage heaps.
“If I could have them change anything,” one woman said. “I’d have them change the mentality.”
“What do you mean?”
“You can fix the sewers and the trash and clean this place up, but if you don’t change the mentality, nothing will change.”
She was right—and that’s when I understood the difference Compassion was making among the poorest of the poor in this neighborhood. Sure, there’s food and education, but what they’re really giving is so much more.
The Compassion project teaches kids about nutrition, sanitation, and health. They’re helping them develop social skills as well as lasting friendships with others who are making healthy decisions for their lives.
They’re providing role models of those who have grown up in the same community, the same conditions, but are choosing to break the cycle of poverty and live different. Each day the kids get a vision for a new normal, a new way of life. And it’s not just for the individual kids within the families. They go home and share what they’ve learned with their parents and siblings. They’re introducing them to Jesus. They’re getting them plugged into the local church.
In a word, they’re giving them HOPE. [Tweet this]
Maybe that’s one reason those lucky enough to be in the project are referred to being in the “Valley of Hope.”
As we packed up to leave, I was struck by an image of the kids on the outside of the gate.
They stood, gripping the metal bars, longing to be accepted into the program. 
But adding more kids to the program requires sponsors. People like you and me who will open the gate for them and say “yes” to a whole new life of possibilities, one marked by hope.
You and I can open the gate for more kids—not just in Kenya but around the world—for just $38 a month.
Will you join me and sponsor a kid today? Click here to open the gate to kids waiting for a sponsor. [Tweet this]
