When Conrad Nicholson Hilton passed on in 1979, he left a will with a special request...that the foundation he started should pay special attention to the Catholic Nuns for their special work among the poor. Following in the footsteps of his grandfather, Steven Hilton, the current President and CEO of the Hilton foundation led a high profile delegation to Nairobi Kenya to visit with Catholic nuns.
His visit was to asses and witness for himself the results of the work the Foundation has been doing over the last five years on a programme, he himself initiated, the Sisters Leadership Development Initiative (SLDI). The purpose is to increase access for management and leadership skill-building for African Sisters through training and education and adaptable to the specific needs and contexts in which the Sisters are working.
During his visit, Steven witnessed first- hand the work that the first graduates of the programme had done in their communities as well as among the people they serve. His team visited more than 10 different projects run by the sisters among the poor people of Kenya. They listened to stories of those served by the projects, from kindergarten children to high school children, rehabilitated street children, the sick in hospital, farm workers as well those living with HIV and AIDS. This was proof of the effectiveness of the skills transferred to the nuns over the last 4 years.
In the outskirts of the industrial town of Thika, the Hilton delegation visited the Assumption sisters of Nairobi where they witnessed the activities being carried out by the Nuns in their expansive Karibaribi community. This community encompasses, the mother house and formation house for the sisters, a coffee farm that goes back to the early 60s, a modern agricultural farm where they are growing all types of food crops, a school beginning from Nursery to high school.
The making of a modern Nun!
The Hilton team witnessed how the skills gained by Sisters: Susan Wairimu Njoroge in Project Management, Catherine Kanyua and Mercy Florence in Administration, Basila Musyimi in Finance, all working in different stations across the country has transformed the operations of the congregation to a higher level of effectivity. The skills imparted on the nuns were evidently in use in the projects being run by the nuns and those they had mentored in the expansive Karibaribi community.
In Kasarani, the outskirts of Nairobi, the Hilton delegation visited St. Francis Community Hospital, which is part of a whole range of projects run by the Little sisters of St. Francis in an area that is populated people from low income areas who live in the informal settlements around the hospital. The delegation was taken through the hospital, a rehabilitation centre for street children and listened narrations of people living with HIV and AIDS who are under the care of the nuns. A 7 year old boy Emmanuel John Zachary, a member of the child support group at St. Francis Hospital epitomised the work of the nuns... “I know that I am positive, I have learned to live positively, eat a balanced diet, take my drugs, and work hard at school... my life is the hands of the sisters!!!”
In the Kahawa West area Steven Hilton and his team visited two different congregations serving the poor in schools and a health centre. The Mary Immaculate Sisters of Nyeri run an education centre around Maziwa area that targets the informal settlements around the area. The Mary Immaculata Educational Centre caters for more than 500 children who depend entirely on the nuns to cater for their needs both personal and educational.
In another part of the expansive area of Kahawa West, the Franciscan Elizabethan sisters run chain of Nursery schools within informal settlements surrounding Kenyatta University. The nursery schools also operate as feeding centres that cater for more than 600 children from poor backgrounds. Their nursery schools have taken on board all children including those living with various disabilities as a way to support them. In addition, the nuns also care for HIV positive children who are neglected by their parents.
In one of the encounters with the community, Sr. Wamuyu summed up the experiences of the nuns... “We are all these children have ...we are their father and mother... when the day comes to an end they are afraid to go...some of them have nowhere to go...” Sr. Wamuyu is a beneficiary of the SLDI programme.
The Hilton team participated in the graduation of the 2nd group of nuns having gone through the SLDI training. A total of 43 nuns graduated with skills in general administration and finance management from four countries, Zambia, Uganda, Tanzania and Kenya at the Chemichemi ya Ukweli centre run by the Association of sisterhoods of Kenya (AOSK). These nuns are working in schools, hospitals, welfare homes agricultural, and microfinance programmes across the East African countries where they are making huge progress and improving the lives of the poor across the divide.
During the commencement, Mr. Hilton promised to continue supporting the nuns in their work as they aspire to work among the poor, he promised increased funding for the project and challenged the sisters to seek better ways of integration as they continue serving among the poor.
Since the initiation of the project in 2007, over 800 nuns have been trained directly in the acquisition of skill in strategic planning, needs assessment, grant writing, financial management, report writing, mentoring, team building and ethical leadership. In the spirit of the founder of the Hilton Hotel chain, to “relieve the suffering, the distressed and destitute” without regard to race, religion, or country, more than 1200 sisters and co-workers have been mentored across 6 African countries; Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Zambia, Ghana and Nigeria.
Over 2 million dollars have been spent directly by the Hilton Foundation in this endeavour and the President and CEO promised increased and diversified funding for the African Sisters Educative Collaborative and the SLDI project in particular. This is understood in the background of his grand-father’s aspiration to support the Catholic Sisters, “who devote their love and life’s work for the good of mankind.”
THE PLACE OF AFRICAN NUNS AMONG MOVERS AND SHAKERS
Do you ever get the feeling that you’d like a little good news? In the year since Our Africa was launched, the world and the African region within it has had its fair share of calamity and short quick uptakes of breath. Politically, the past year has been momentous. We have seen the people-led overthrow of oppressive regimes in Africa’s North, the emergence of Africa’s second woman President, Joyce Banda of Malawi, and the birth of a new African nation, South Sudan, and moves toward armed and ideological takeover of communities by Muslim fundamentalists in northern Mali. In September 2011, the world lost a visionary leader with the passing of Kenyan environmentalist and outspoken political activist Wangaari Mathaai. A week later, two Liberian women, Leymah Gbowee and President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf joined her in history as Nobel Peace Prize Laureates, representing different but compelling models of activist leadership.
This happens at the global level while in the small confines of numerous homes across Africa, a different of women continue touching the lives of tens and thousands of ordinary people through their extra ordinary acts. Catholic Nuns across Africa continue to carry out small acts of charity in the name of community service that they have done over the centuries. Githurai 44 is a suburb towards the North of Nairobi, inhabited by low income earners, most of who are casual labourers in small industries around the city or are even self-employed in small incoming business. Life here is hand to mouth and they can barely afford to make ends meet. This means a bulk of their of their earning is spent on meeting the most basics of necessities... food, at times this food is not even sufficient. It is the norm in most homes in this area to get one meal a day. Their shelter is in the informal settlement that has developed in the land between the affluent Jomo Kenyatta University and the age old Kamiti Maximum Prison.
In their midst of all these happenings are Catholic nuns of the Elizabethan Congregation who have been silently but effectively ministering among the poor of Githurai 44 who straddle the Kamae, Pambazuko and Soweto slums. The nuns have been running the Vendramin Education Centre that caters for over 600 children. They run 3 nursery schools that also double up as feeding centres of street children. The Vendramin Educational Centre offers a wholistic education inspired by the spirit of the founder of the Elizabethan sisters who believed in ‘High as our origin and High as our destiny’. In addition the nuns also run a community hospital, St. Mukasa hospital that caters for the local community. It is here that they have formed HIV and AIDS support group that has brought together more than 100 persons living positively with the virus.
The Elizabethan Sisters have been beneficiaries of the Hilton Foundation through the Fund for sisters to support their various projects. Sr. Wamuyu a member of this community has been a direct beneficiary of the Sisters Leadership Development Initiative (SLDI) programme. The weight of their community outreach is spread across all the projects they run. The school, while being all inclusive has a larger majority from the surrounding informal settlements, and so many parents cannot afford to pay the fee charged by the school for the education of their children. Thus the nuns are left to bear the costs of running the school, paying for utilities, and salaries for both teaching and non-teaching staff as well as catering for the food that children eat at school. This food is essential, in most cases it is the only food that these children ever get to eat.
The situation is replicated across the ridge at Mary Immaculate Education centre where the Mary Immaculate sisters have also put up a centre to cater for the poor of society around Kahawa Maziwa. The nuns have attempted to establish a complete and self reliant education centre catering for both primary and secondary school students along with the attendant services.
The nuns take care of more than 500 children who entirely depend on the sisters for their schooling and upkeep. Sr. Martha, a beneficiary of the SLDI programme put her skills to work and made proposals to various donors who financed the development of Mary Immaculate Education Centre. The organisations she approached for funding have made a mosaic of supporters of the sisters’ work a tribute Sr. Martha gives to Hilton Foundation for having enabled her to gain skills is project development.
In deed the devotion of the nuns to the care of the lowly attracts all types of support as clearly demonstrated by a building at Mary Immaculate Centre that had a total of four development partners, each having funded a separate aspect of the building that was still to be completed. With the skills imparted through the support of Hilton Foundation, one thing is certain, the spirit of Sr. Martha and her protégés have soared no door will be too heavy to be knocked in search of partnership, all for the sake of the poorest of the poor!
THE MIRACLE OF “FEEDING MULTITUDES” AT KIBAGARE.
Situated at the western part of the city of Nairobi, Kibagare slums is home to over 10,000 persons. This slum, like many others across the city developed as a source of temporary shelter for the poorly paid families, divorcees, the separated and widowed, and those with other social and economic problems.
The sAssumption sisters set foot here in the late 70s and pracitically started a feeding programme in 1980. In their own words; “ we started with almost nothing but big hearts full of love. It started with a desire to love and express the love in simple acts of mercy and concern. It started as a feeding program for 50 hungry informal settlement children.” Today the home still runs the feeding programme having grown hundred fold and they feed over 1500 every Saturday, for every child within a 5 kilometre radius.
The centre that begun with one nun, Sr. Martin, (after whom the school has been named) who walked from door to door to feed 50 children has grown to a complete educational centre. This comprises of a nursery school that caters for children from the age of 4, a primary school that currently holds 625 pupils and an all girls secondary school with 250 students. The centre is run by two nuns assisted by a teaching staff of 28 , 8 non-teaching staff and numerous volunteers who give their time and resources from time to time.
Sr. Catherine K.Ndereba, a beneficiary of the first cycle of SLDI studied in the Administration Track in 2007-9, took her studies seriously and turned her learning into a mentorship that benefited three of her community members who have gone on to replicate the learning in different places.
From the learning, Sr. Ndereba learned skills of resource mobilization, team building, coordinating meetings, and delegation of duties, among others that she employed in her immediate undertaking at st. Martin school. This saw a phenomenal growth in the motivation among the staff, she also went full throttle in the project management, wrote proposals to numerous potential partners and she got responses that resulted in partnerships with such corporates as Christian Fund for Children- Africa (CFCA),Good News Committe Holland, I&M bank. She also forged partnerships with big schools in Nairobi like Strathmore School, St. Marys School, St. Nicholas and Waridi nursery school.
Advocacy and networking skills that Sr. Ndereba learned enabled her to lobby the parents and guardians of the children to contribute directly to the education of their children by contributing at least Ksh.500 ($50) for each child and physically turning up to volunteer at school. These efforts have gone a long way in promoting the growth and development of the centre and gradually the nuns have built good will across the society.
While the Hilton foundation may not have all the funds to run all the projects that the Catholic nuns run across Kenya, and even Africa, the SLDI initiative is definitely an ingenious method that has imparted essential skills to nuns that has enabled them tap their own internal strengths and bring out their inborn talents. In addition, SLDI has given them skills to reach out to the local community, harness resources and forge lasting partnerships that have gone a long way to fulfill the dreams of grandpa Hilton...to support the nuns who spend the whole of their lives to support the poorest of the poor.
Millions of poor people have had a touch of Hilton through the work of the nuns in their various fields of apostolates across the African continent at all levels; children have been touched in their personal, spiritual and social growth by providing material resources and moral support through a variety of holistic educational development programs. The sick and infirm have found healing in the hands of the nuns and their companions in the service of the Lord and ultimately the society is a better place by each nun enabled to be a better manager, an effective steward of resources.
