Just as she was determined to get out of these challenging living conditions, so too is she determined to bring positive change to the lives of the girls in Safe Spaces. In the program, Nish creates a safe space in mind, in body and in spirit through programme activities - including life skills and sexual health training, basketball, theatre, music, dance, poetry, yoga and photography.

Living in Mathare valley slums was harsh for me as a young girl. I remember a maze of low rusted iron sheet houses with mud walls, piles of rubbish, open gutters of sewage running in front of our house, torn clothes, and empty stomachs - we were trapped by poverty. The street corridors housed colorful stalls selling second hand clothes and fruits; children carrying their crying siblings on their backs weaved between chickens, goats, and skinny dogs. Our community was ridden with heartbreaking scenarios of raped girls, child prostitution, beaten and violated girls and women, sick, hungry, and dying infants, women delivering their babies in their homes on sacks and polythene bags, and drug dens that were traps to those who couldn’t fight the harsh conditions. Most people find the slums hard to escape, and often succumb to crime, alcoholism, prostitution, early marriage and drug abuse. I escaped - I was not lucky, as many like to say, but I Labored Under Constructive Knowledge to make a change in my life, regardless of my circumstances. None of it was easy, especially for a young girl.

Schools Without Borders(SWB) has given me the opportunity to prove that slums represent a formidable opportunity for small interventions like Safe Spaces can have tremendous impacts that benefit a lot of people. While external support is extremely helpful in the success of these initiatives, the girls we work with have realized that solutions can be found within their communities if they use the education they get from the programmes positively. The space to dream, learn independently, and develop your self-esteem and eventually make productive decisions for your life is a God given space. Equipping girls with cameras and teaching girls to become witnesses and advocates of their conditions has helped the girls to share their crude realities through photos and describe their realities without fear. Giving Girls support to go to formal schools has helped more than 10 girls complete their high school education. Through Safe Spaces, girls have challenged gender stereotypes that women cannot engage in male-dominated fields. Currently, 5 girls in our program are almost finished their auto mechanics course. Thanks to the free computer lessons offered to the girls at Safe Spaces, they are all computer literate. The girls and women at Safe Spaces have started imagining and creating their own Heaven.

Schools Without Borders has exposed Safe Spaces’ work to the world through international exchanges, documentaries, and networks. They have amplified the power behind the successful programmes at Safe Spaces. The world needs such platforms. Working with SWB has helped me come up with practical ideas that work for Safe Spaces.

Young girls have a lot to teach the world, if only the busy world would stop and listen. The world is so busy planning for these girls’ futures, yet they do not involve them in building their own futures. The government is busy holding forums about women's’ welfare in big, expensive hotels, yet they don’t involve the women they discuss in designing the kind of communities that they want for themselves.

I look forward to the day that the world will call upon a woman to decide her own destiny, rather than deciding it for her.  I look forward to the day that the government will stop holding discussions on behalf of the women but come down and join hands with us in our communities to build their world - for that will be the beginning of true development.

“Imagine there is no Heaven, above us only sky. No hell below us, it’s easy if you try. Not only trying, but trying harder. Not running away from life’s realities, but facing them head on when necessary. Imagine all the people living for today, for yesterday is gone and you are one day older. For tougher life realities, it’s up to you to find solutions, not only solutions but sustainable development solutions to make your Heaven a Reality.”

Peninah Nthenya, Safe Spaces Director

I came into contact with SWB in 2007. During this time we were establishing Safe Spaces, a girl’s specific project. Safe Spaces was to function within our organization, South East District Youth Empowerment Association (SEDYEA) in Romotswa, Botswana. In 2005-2008, around the early development of SEDYEA, The City of Toronto and South East District Council (SEDC) partnership was in its prime. As a result, each and every partner that came or any white person who came to Ramotswa, to SEDYEA in particular, was known to be from the City of Toronto. So SWB was also known as the City of Toronto. Later, to me, Julian Caspari became SWB. This was perhaps because he was the only person within SWB that we got to meet regularly. As our personal relationships also got stronger, a conducive environment was created between Julian (SWB) and us (SEDYEA) and I got the chance to even meet more SWB employees, some only through the emails like Heather, as she was always involved, especially when we had discussions around finances.

The funny thing for me is that internally, even today, whenever it is announced that we will be hosting visitors, you will hear our peer educators shouting “Caspari is coming, we have to clean”.

When we first met with SWB, we were in our infant stages. There were no systems, procedures or policies in place. It was through SWB that we began to work on basic systems and procedures especially around finances and administration. Working with Julian always stands out to me as one of our “aha!” moments. Personally, as a leader, it gave me the chance to learn from SWB about putting together a funding proposal. Today, I write proposals with ease but really, the seed was first planted through working with Julian. I continue to say Julian because my understanding of SWB has always been based on Julian’s presence and representation.

In one word, I would personally describe SWB as “education”. SWB’s vision for education has been like that of great philosophers such as Paulo Freire to me, where participation means total involvement.

Our community Garden, which we worked on with SWB, was a great testimony of what local people can do for themselves and their communities through empowerment. Local people must control the process, for if they do not, then they may be used as mere mouth-pieces for ideas produced by others, and what I liked about SWB’s approach was that the point of view they worked within was that of local people.

A community was built through SWB; I got the chance to meet such people as Nish and her great team in Nairobi. My friendship with Julian (as a representation of SWB) grew, a brotherhood was created between us - memories that not even time will take away, guided by a common goal and vision.

SWB has been a different partner from the norm. In fact, our relationship with SWB, or should I say Julian, has been like that of a boy and a girl madly in love and totally honest and faithful to each other. We could discuss matters and issues as open as we possibly could around each other, matters relating to programmes, funding and administration without the fear of being judged or negatively impacting on the partnership.

Steve Hamm was one of SWB’s first international trip leaders back in 2004. His genius and compassion contributed to building transformative learning curricula for SWB programs, and his deep sense of inquiry led SWB to question our framing as we built partnerships with international grassroots groups. Currently, Steve works for Swarm, and still stands in support of SWB - he is an ambassador by all definitions. Much respect to Steve for sharing his learnings with us on our 10 year celebration.

I worked with Schools Without Borders almost 10 years ago, during its first big transitional phase, a period which saw it evolve from an educational adventure company into an ambitious non-profit. While the organization has shed many skins since, I think that our experiences from those early years still encapsulate a few essential SWB truths, and on a personal level, I owe a great deal of my knowledge to what I learned over the course of my two summers in Kenya.

In July 2004, I was one of four leaders judged sufficiently responsible to take charge of a group of 15 and 16 year olds, introducing them to new modes of life in Kenya. We explored concepts as diverse as conservation, urban planning and post-colonial history. That month took us from the narrow dirt paths of the Mathare valley to the verdant, wild-packed scrub of Likepia, an invigorating journey that left us, the leaders, still feeling, somehow, underwhelmed. Was that it?  And…how could it be more?

In the aftermath of the summer programmes, Chris and Julian ripped Schools Without Borders apart, a wild re-imagining and re-founding that you rarely see undertaken by founders.  It takes guts and it takes passion and it takes vision and it’s a lesson that deserves to be underscored and promoted, even if it’s a difficult one to follow: if it’s not working, change it.

When I arrived back in Nairobi in the summer of 2005, the focus of the programme was different. We were covering many of the same topics, but in a more meaningful way. We began working more closely with the individuals who had the potential and desire to make a positive impact on their communities - not just for the duration of the trip.

I think  the whole re-structure  was galvanizing and its ethos oozed into the programme itself. Ravi and I could be more experimental; we could take more risks. There were moments - exuberant, full-hearted moments - when I think we surprised ourselves. The culmination of the trip involved a challenge to the participants: go make something happen! And things did happen. A cross-cultural dance exchange developed and executed in 3 days, and a charity boxing event which managed to attract television and print media attention!

It was the first time in my life I realized that work could be play, and that if you want to do something, you have to just do it and see what happens.