Poverty is a strange thing. For starters, it’s relative. That means that for some people in the United States, poverty could mean living on less than $15,000 per year. In the developing world, even half of that would be enough to live like royalty. But even in crushing poverty, the capacity for people to work for the betterment of their communities astounds me.

During a walk through a slum in northeastern Nairobi, a man named Edwin asked me if America had slums of its own. Minutes before, I had walked through a schoolhouse full of children eating lunch (likely the only meal they would have that day). It smelled like a farm – not in a good way – and as I looked around the room I realized why. The upper floor was a chicken coop; the children were eating in what was essentially a barn.

Stepping back into the light of the slum, I had to dodge the trickle of sewage running down the street. Everything around me was constructed of corrugated sheet metal. Surrounded by the sights, sounds, and smells of the place we were standing, I desperately wanted to tell Edwin that America has no slums, that we have social services and housing, and at the very least, proper sanitation in what we call “areas of lower socio-economic status.”

Instead, I waffled. I said, “Oh, we have something like slums. We call them ghettos, and instead of expanding them outwards like a slum in the developing world, in America, our slums are in very tall buildings. We build vertically.”

He paused and chewed that over for a moment before answering, “That is very strange.” Then he led me down the street, saying, “Come, I want to show you my carpentry shop!” Every month, Edwin donated a small amount of his meager earnings to fund Tumaini Pamoja, a community-based organization that provides care and support to people living with or affected by HIV/AIDS.

Edwin was proud to do what he could to help those in his community, even if it meant sacrificing his hard-earned carpentry money. For Edwin, living in poverty was not a curse, it was an opportunity to change things for the better.  He saw his individual work as part of the bigger picture, and was eager to do what he could to help support those around him.

-  Director of Operations Tim Brauhn