So, what would you do?

Our friend sells the baskets her mother makes

Yesterday we were given the ultimate ‘what would you do?” challenge . One of the amazing young people who have been through the training to become a deliverer of the Leadership for Hope programme, has set up a youth arts project in their slum for musicians, acrobats & singers – they have gathered them all together, got them focused, releasing talent right, left and centre. Now they have produced a CD of their work to promote them across the vast city of Nairobi.


Like wanting your parents at the opening night of your school play, Stephen excitedly told us yesterday that we have to be at the launch party on 28th of August – 2 days before we fly back to the UK. We were thrilled, proud, excited….and then he told us where the launch party will be……the Somali Embassy in Nairobi!!!!!!! Given such an invitation, what would you do?

Masai cattle are EVERYWHERE!

It’s just one of many dilemmas we face every day. Dilemmas we didn’t face in comfortable Oxford.

Dilemmas like…….


There was a gunfight behind our house a few weeks ago, as another set of armed robbers were fighting their way towards the inside of a house. Many people are leaving the city, violent crime is up by 22% in Nairobi this year……but the people we love and work with here don’t have any choice to walk away from this daily reality. What would you do?




And then there's the man who is always trying to sell you strawberries at the roundabout. You can see they are small and past their best and were probably grown somewhere in polluted water, but if he doesn’t sell these shabby boxes he has no way of getting the bus fare home or eating much that day.
What would you do?



James the gateman wants yet another advance on his salary because he can't pay his daughters fees to finish nursing school and his family will be evicted from their home next Tuesday back in the village, because he cant pay the rent. What would you do?

Fancy a night at this local hotel?

One of your trainees from Leadership for Hope has a credible plan to start the first ever library in their slum and your tax rebate could pay for it to happen. You see it is a brilliant project, you want to encourage their entrepreneurship but don’t want to foster dependency. What would you do?



The crippled guy drags himself up to your car in the car park and you see he has shown amazing initiative making hand made greeting cards. You look at the cards and you know you wont actually send any of them, but then you look at him….What would you do?

Jason (3rd from right in blue shirt) with our other Trainers

Jason, a 70 year Kenyan tried to run a Leadership for Hope in the tough community of Kiserian. He wanted to give an opportunity to a bunch of people in the community who had lost belief in themselves, to learn that they too could pick up the pen again in their lives and write a different story. The Chief wouldn’t give them permission to use a venue without ‘some money quietly changing hands”. What would you do?


What did he do? Jason wouldn’t support the corruption, so he set up his training ‘venue’ in the car park of the place where men spend their day shoveling sand into lorries and out of lorries. After one day these 30+ laborers were longing to hear more and wondering how they had gone their whole lives without hearing these leadership principles. Jason plans to return and give them more.

Jason used his car as a training wall

The workers waiting for Jason's p.m training session to begin

We hear so many amazing stories like these each week from our trainers, now delivering Leadership for Hope across the country, that it takes my breath away.



- TW