By Marc Maxson | GlobalGiving staffer
A week ago I met Wycliffe Mboya, the founder of SACRENA, in Kisumu Kenya. I was in town to facilitate a workshop for 40 new organizations trying to use GlobalGiving to fundraise for their projects. Many organizations are doing good grassroots work, but not all of them understand social media. Many need a primer on Internet and twitter in order to thrive in the digital world. Wycliffe had volunteered to organize this workshop, so here I was.
He took me to see his project, an orphanage and youth sport program for the Kisumu slum of Minyata. About 50,000 people slum it out here, and it has a rough reputation. As friendly as the kids are, Minyata’s violent criminal underbelly comes out when the sun goes down. Many of these orphans are the children of AIDS victims, and all of them speak glowingly about being part of a sports team.
SACRENA’s office was one of the larger shacks on a street in the heart of the slums. It had a nice hand-painted sign. A small crowd of eight youths were gathered there, in preparation for my visit. Wycliffe understands how globalgiving works. I know because when I talked to fast, he translated into local idioms for me and heads nodded in recognition of the idea. Here and elsewhere, the local Swahili translation for GlobalGiving is “Harambe.” As one teenager explains Harambe, “when you have something heavy to lift and you cannot do it yourself, you yell ‘harambe’ and the people come help you so everyone does it together.” Harambe is a village revival fundraising event where the people pool their money to support a common purpose. Wycliffe said, “GlobalGiving is Harambe for our sport project on the Internet.”
We handed out bumper stickers that say “What does your community need?” and the site: www.globalgiving.org/ideas. They were a hit. Everyone likes stickers, even if they don’t quite understand the website part. We’re trying to engage kids in slums like Minyata to tell us (and you) what they need most. They are the ‘experts’ on what they need so why not let them speak?
Another common word used by others to explain about the idea of GlobalGiving is “opportunity.” Wycliffe explained to his youths, “GlobalGiving is an opportunity for us to talk to the whole world and let them know what we are doing.” Wycliffe is experimenting with twitter. Maybe if he can do it you can 'tweet' on his behalf too.
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