The founder and Chief Executive Officer of the Shining Hope for Communities (Shofco) will be lauded at the Ceremony that recognises leaders from the allover the World who are committed to drive and initiate change in their communities.
Dr. Odede is being endowed for the community-driven change, championed by Shofco, that has now become a model for global Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs)
As a way of uplifting his community after growing up in poverty in Kibera slums, Odede started the Shofco which is is now a grassroots movement that has impacted over 2.5 million slum dwellers in Kenya through various causes such access to health, water, community advocacy platforms, education, and sustainable livelihoods program.
The 39 year old who is the oldest in a family of eight kids has been brought up witnessing violence and poverty at its core until he resulted to being a street kid
The oldest of eight children, Dr. Odede experienced extreme poverty and violence, became a street boy aged 10 and later joined a gang.
Having lived in a place where access to clean water was a dream, Odede grew up knowing that a day will come and he would succeed in providing clean water to his community.
“We used to walk several kilometres to get water and most of the time, we would suffer water-borne diseases because the water we got was contaminated due to the underground pipes getting mixed up with raw sewage,” Odede told CNN in an earlier interview.
Through Shofco, Odede installed a water treatment facility in the slum which can pump up to 300,000 litres of water at a time to aerial pipes that connect to various water kiosks throughout Kibera and Mathare.
With an eye at gender inequality that women have been facing in slums especially, Odede founded two tuition-free schools for girls in Kibera and Mathare slums.
So far, the school in Kibera, which has over 500 pupils, has had students sit for KCPE since 2017 while in Mathare, there are nearly 400 students from pre-primary to Grade 7.
The Kibera School for Girls is now a consistent top performer, ranked among the top 10 in Nairobi, with graduates going on to attend high schools in Kenya and the United States.
Aside Nairobi county, Shofco spreads the hand of humanityto other counties where every year, over 500 needy students from Mombasa, Nakuru, Uasin Gishu and Kisii counties who score more that 300 marks receive scholarships.
Odede’s efforts do not end there. Shofco has seven clinics in the slums that attend to over 700 people in the community at near-zero cost after decades of struggling to access medical care due to its high cost.
He also initiated the Shofco Urban Network (SUN), a grassroots movement that brings together individuals and households through social groups, a key pillar of the ogransation that ensures community-driven change is achieved.
There are over three million SUN members in Kenya with over 1.5 beneficiaries. SUN has created a self-sustaining group savings and loans programme for the members and their immediate families with over 300,000 active saving groups.
Dr. Odede hasnow been named a Young Global Leader at the World Economic Forum, an Obama Foundation Africa Leader, a USAID Advisory Board member, and the winner of the Mohammed Ali Humanitarian Award among others just for the little million efforts.
