Kennedy Odede

Kennedy is an internationally recognized human rights activist. Kennedy was born and raised in the Kibera Slum, the largest slum in Africa. As the oldest of eight children, he assumed responsibility for his family at the age of ten. In Kibera, he became a certified HIV/AIDS counselor, was a community health worker, and ran several slum-wide AIDS education campaigns.

In 2004, he founded SHOFCO, one of the largest community based organizations in Kibera founded and run by residents of the slum. Kennedy is now the co-founder and Executive Director of Shining Hope for Communities, a nonprofit that works in Kibera to combat gender inequality and extreme poverty. Kennedy has received widespread recognition for his work. He is a 2010 Echoing Green Fellow, won the 2010 Dell Social Innovation Competition, and recently wrote an Op-Ed that appeared in The New York Times. He is a senior fellow with Humanity in Action and a junior at Wesleyan University. Kennedy is 25 years old, speaks five languages, and brings his extensive experience in grass-roots organizing, as well as passion for social justice and poverty alleviation, to his work with Shining Hope for Communities. To learn more, visit shininghopeforcommunities.org.