We believe that persistent and systemic poverty is the global injustice of our time. At the same time, we also believe that traditional approaches to curtailing poverty have not been efficient or effective for long-term sustainability. Our model for community development takes place at the grass-roots level in some of East Africa’s poorest communities - and it is working! But we need help. We are filming a documentary to promote a truthful (yet dignified) awareness to raise funds to empower micro-enterprise in Kibera. Read more about why:


With an estimated population of over 1,000,000 people, Kibera is the most populated slum south of the Sahara Desert. The majority of slum dwellers are young people who have little education or skill, and who are from diverse cultural and ethnic backgrounds, moving to Kibera after political unrest over the last decade. In Kibera, women are particularly disadvantaged because half of the population lives in female-headed and single-parent households. Girls education is not encouraged and many end up marrying young or having children prior to marriage. This shift in gender roles has resulted in the destabilization of families, negatively impacting the younger generation’s moral and social values.

The concerns for the people of Kibera are too many to list, but here is a general picture of life in this slum:

• There is an average of one pit latrine for every 100 people. It’s hard to do simple repairs or to build a toilet without receiving permission from the administrative provincial government through the local chief.

• The average home size in Kibera is 3 meters by 3 meters, with an average of five persons per dwelling.

• Drinking water is pumped through metal and broken plastic pipes alongside sewage trenches.

• Idle youth end up join gangs who patrol the slums, sometimes demanding a protection fee from people. In fact, crime has become a major income earner for idle youth in the slum.


Life in Abundance International is Africa’s poorest communities in a new way. Our approach is wholistic, participatory and works to identify assets already in the community, rather than relying on assets from the outside in perpetuity. LIA staff provide focused wholistic development training, program management, and technical support to transform these communities through the local churches. We equip the local churches to go beyond traditional teaching and preaching ministries in an effort to meet the practical needs of their neighbors, effectively, for long term sustainable transformation.

LIA has been serving and working alongside church partners in Kibera for the past four years. Now that some these church relationships have matured, LIA is able to implement two separate micro-enterprise initiatives, focused primarily on employing single mothers.

Program One: Health for Income: We plan to help churches strengthen their healthcare outreach by bringing essential health products to households and making them attractively affordable so that the poor may purchase them and use them to prevent and treat disease and promote health.

Program Two: Shoes: The enterprise will create export-oriented jobs by the manufacture of women’s footwear. This will be accomplished by training and employing a cluster of people from Kibera to work as shoe manufacturers right in their very own community. We will go the extra mile to care for the workers’ families while they are at work (child care, health care, etc.)


Kelsey believes that if we reduce global issues to the stories of individual people, we can better see ourselves, our parents, our sons and daughters, and our hopes and struggles in one another. For more, please check out whereamiwearing.com.