Kenyan sees philanthropic path in ICT training

Working for the regional headquarters that covered countries in the East (including the Great Lakes region) and Horn of Africa, it was hard not to come across the toll that war/ civil conflict took on people and I got interested in an emergent field that was trying to prevent aid from inadvertently causing more conflict.

“I decided to learn more about this conflict resolution as I thought that it was fascinating and really wanted to sink my teeth into this and find out more. So I enrolled at the University of Massachusetts in Boston’s Master of Arts programme in Dispute Resolution. And I learned a lot and also during my time there, I then got really interested in the role that technology can play in the non-profit work.”

After acquiring this degree, she went to work for the Centre for the Prevention of Genocide, in the state of Virginia.

The interesting element of this is the technology that the centre was putting to use in its work. She says she was attracted to their mission—that you can use the technology to detect and prevent mass atrocities.

“That if you’ve built a network of groups on the ground that are reporting on gross human rights violations (detection) and you’ve also built up the network to connect with policy makers and the media (prevention), that maybe you can create an early warning and prevention system for genocide and mass atrocities, “she says.

She then got immersed in that world— learning on the fly how to talk and work with Congress/ congressional staffers, and how to work with the US media. The first inkling of how useful this could be was when the Darfur atrocities first started coming to light.

Unacceptable deaths
“The importance of helping groups get their information out was brought home because as early as early 2003, we had people from the Darfurian diaspora coming to tell us of atrocities that were being carried out.

So we were working to try and get some traction for this story— with people on the Hill and the media – but without more information , we were not able to go far. It took between one and a half and two years for the story to go mainstream.

And in the meantime, there’d been many unacceptable deaths. This just underscored the need to get groups to get info on their work to the right people as easily and as efficiently as possible,” she says.

Mendi Njonjo – an alumnus of Ngandu Girls and the University of Nairobi— is one of those lucky people who can see the direct impact of their work.

“Up in Gulu, it’s motivational as every time I go there, that’s when you know for sure and for true that peace is not some nebulous concept. It’s a very concrete, touchable thing. This can be seen in the buildings that are going up almost overnight, the sheer numbers of people who teem the streets simply because they can. They’re out shopping, walking on the streets because they no longer have to be in the shelter of the IDP camps. There’s an almost tangible buzz and I love being part of that— seeing people go back home to work their fields, to rebuild their homes, start businesses after years of being stuck in camps. It’s very, very rewarding.”

Her inspiration? ‘That thing inside people that makes people ask “why not?” You usually see the dark side of humanity in my line of work, but I am inspired by the greatness of the human spirit.”

Perhaps best summed up in the title of President Obama’s book – ‘You know – the cheekiness of hope. The effrontery of hope. It’s so ... audacious. That it is possible to traverse a dragon filled ocean. That it is possible to rebuild a life after decades of being harassed by the LRA. I dig that. I admire it. It inspires me.”