Many in the Wesleyan family may have seen the news this week that Jessica Posner ’09 won the VH1 Do Something! award. This brings $100,000 to the work of the organization Jessica and Kennedy Odede ’12 founded to improve the living conditions for women and children in Kibera, Kenya. The team has initiated the Johanna Justin-Jinich Memorial Health Clinic in Kibera, and so this support is especially welcome.
This has been an eventful summer for the team of Wesleyan folks. In addition to the VH1 award, Kennedy received an Outstanding Commitment Grant from the Clinton Foundation to help with the new clinic. On the ground in Kibera, the new Community Center has been completed, and 25 more girls have been admitted to the school. I’m told there is a team of Wesleyan students in Kenya working on these projects for a year, including Jessica, Ari Tolman and Leah Lucid, both class of 2010, and Inslee Coddington (’10) who will be joining them in the fall.
The Shining Hope for Communities website has lots more information and pictures. Check out the blog! Most importantly on the site you can find ways to support the work that the team is doing, including sponsoring one of the students!
[tags]Jessica Posner ’09, Do Something Award, Johanna Justin-Jinich Memorial Health Clinic, Kennedy Odede ’12, Outstanding Commitment Grant, Clinton Foundation, Shining Hope for Communities[/tags]
President Roth,
Great post; glad to see this project is receiving acknowledgment for this work both inside and outside the Wesleyan community!
P.S. So this post can be found more easily when searching for Kennedy, “Kennedy Odele ‘12″should read “Kennedy Odede ’12”. It’s small but could change the SEO results.
Thank you so much for the shout-out, President Roth! For those interested, our website is: http://www.hopetoshine.org
All the best from Kenya,
Leah & the Shining Hope for Communities team
On behalf of the members of Wesleyan Alumni in Philanthropy and Public Service (WAPPS), we congratulate Jessica, Kennedy and other colleagues of the Shining Hope team on their continued success in winning prizes and funding from a wide variety of business plan/social entrepreneur competitions! As an emerging new affinity group for alumni interested in the broad fields of nonprofits, foundations, community service initiatives and social entrepreneurs, we at WAPPS encourage any/all grads interested in furthering the discourse to sign up on our LinkEd site – tied into the general Wesleyan University Alumni Association LinkEd site…..and stay tuned for further developments this fall/winter on programs and seminars both on campus and in various cities!