AWARDS AND RECOGNITION

CFK Receives the Oklahoma City National Memorial & Museusm 2008 Reflections of Hope Award

The Oklahoma City National Memorial & Museum will honor Carolina for Kibera, Inc., an organization whose mission is to fight abject poverty and help prevent violence through community-based development in the Kibera slum of Nairobi, Kenya and beyond, as the recipient of the 2008 Reflections of Hope Award.  The award, established in 2005 as part of the 10th anniversary commemoration of the Oklahoma City bombing, honors a living person or group whose extraordinary work has significantly impacted a community, state or nation. It also exemplifies that hope not only survives but also thrives in the wake of political violence. Read more...

CFK Honored as “Hero of Global Health” by TIME Magazine and Gates Foundation

On November 3, 2005, at the TIME Global Health Summit in New York City, CFK was recognized as one of nine “Heroes of Global Health” from around the world.  The Summit was a landmark event that brought together the major players in global health – researchers, practitioners, politicians, NGOs, religious leaders, policy makers, and rock stars – to debate, discuss, and move forward the dialogue about the greatest outstanding challenges in global health.  As part of this event, TIME Magazine and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation recognized organizations on the front lines of these global health challenges. “We were looking for people who had pioneered innovative ways to improve the health of poor people around the world,” TIME Sciences Editor Phillip Elmer-DeWitt said. “To our surprise, wherever we looked, we found them – from an ex-motorbike racer who dispatched hundreds of sidecar-equipped motorcycles across Africa for use as mini-ambulances to a Thai economist who championed condom use among Bangkok sex workers and headed off what could have been a devastating outbreak of HIV/AIDS. The great thing about these projects is that they can be replicated and scaled up – and inspire even more pioneering approaches to improving health worldwide.” CFK Board Chair, Kim Chapman, accepted the award on behalf of the organization and had the opportunity to address the summit’s attendees about the work of CFK.  A web-cast of her remarks can be viewed online at: http://www.time.com/time/2005/globalhealth/webcasts.html.

Binti Pamoja Alumna, Fatuma Roba, Addresses United Nations General Assembly

Binti Pamoja Center alumna Fatuma Roba addressed the United Nations General Assembly in March 2007 in New York City about her experiences as a young woman living in Kibera and how programs like CFK are making a difference.  She was an invited attendee of the UN Commission on the Status of Women.

University of London Book Features CFK as a Model for HIV Prevention

CFK was recognized in 2006 for its pioneering working delivering top-quality healthcare and health education to residents of Kibera.  The Thomas Coram Research Unit, a multidisciplinary research section within the Institute of Education at the University of London, featured CFK as one of six organizations worldwide in its series “Case Studies of Success and Innovation.”  Published in May 2006, the publication includes CFK as one of five organizations globally that are intrepidly leading the fight for “success and innovation for HIV prevention with especially vulnerable young people”

Brookings-Blum Conference at the Aspen Institute

In August 2006 CFK participated at the Brookings-Blum Roundtable at the Aspen Institute in Aspen, Colorado.  The conference explored the relationship between insecurity and poverty, which was characterized as a “tangled web.”  The conference provided CFK with a unique opportunity to engage leaders such as Al Gore, the former head of the World Bank James Wolfensohn, the financier and philanthropist George Soros, and the former President of Ireland, Mary Robinson.  CFK was one of only two grassroots development organizations represented among the group of sixty participants.

Sammy Gitau, Founding Member of CFK, Attends Manchester University (Congratulations to Sammy who graduated from Manchester in December 2007!-check out his story covered by the BBC-From the Slums with Honours)

Sammy Gitau, a founding member of CFK’s Kenyan Board of Trustees, grew up on the unforgiving streets of Mathare, one of Kenya’s most violent slums.  Although he never graduated from high school, Sammy is now a graduate student at Manchester University, where he received a partial scholarship and additional sponsorship from CFK and SC Johnson & Son, Inc.