I grew up in Kenya’s Kibera slum, the largest urban slum in Africa, and experienced extreme poverty firsthand. I was a street child, constantly scraping by for food and water, and lacking basic services like education or health care.
To me, "charity" was a dirty word. I didn’t trust charity workers, who approach aid through single issues—like health promotion or clean water supply—when the reality is the challenges poor people face are complex and intersecting. Their projects never involved the community and left a vacuum in their wake. Acts of charity often had unintended consequences. I will never forget when a charity built a public toilet, only for a neighbor to move in and claim it as his home.
