Conrad N. Hilton Foundation Announces the 2018 Hilton Humanitarian Prize Recipient
Today, the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation announced that the international jury has selected SHOFCO (Shining Hope for Communities) to receive the 2018 Hilton Humanitarian Prize. Based in Nairobi, Kenya, SHOFCO’s mission is to build urban promise from urban poverty.
Growing up in Kibera, one of the largest slums in Africa, Kennedy Odede experienced extreme poverty, violence, lack of opportunity, and deep gender inequality. Odede also dreamed of transforming urban slums, from the inside-out. As a teenager with 20 cents and a soccer ball, he took these dreams seriously and turned them into reality. In 2009, Odede officially incorporated SHOFCO as a nonprofit with his wife and working partner, Jessica Posner Odede, by opening Kibera’s first free school for girls.
Today, SHOFCO is a grassroots movement that catalyzes large-scale transformation in urban slums working in six settlements throughout Kenya, providing a pathway out of poverty to over 220,000 people. First, SHOFCO provides critical services that disrupt the survival model—giving people the opportunity to not just survive, but thrive. SHOFCO’s programs, which include health care, education and economic empowerment for women and girls, and sustainable delivery of clean water through a cutting-edge aerial piping system, are always demand-driven and community led. SHOFCO then builds community organizing platforms to advocate for systemic structural change...