K Street to Kenya.

A friend invited me to an event in D.C. last week with the promise that it would be something right up my alley. So last Thursday evening, after two Metro transfers and a walk through Southeast, I arrived at a beautiful row home just blocks from the Capitol.

The wine flowed.
The h'orderves delighted.
The conversations engaged.

The topic of the evening addressed the work One Home Many Hopes is doing in coastal Kenya in the lives of orphaned girls. Its vision, as founder Thomas described, is to raise up a group of women to be agents of change in their own communities. In day-to-day living OHMH is working to end the cycle of poverty that has plagued the families and communities of coastal Kenya for generations.

Their vision is based loosely on the words of George Bernard Shaw who said, Reasonable people adapt themselves to the world. Unreasonable people attempt to adapt the world to themselves. All progress, therefore, depends on unreasonable people.

It seemed strange to me that half a world away from Kenya, in the beauty of a September evening in our nation's capital, a group of us would be standing around discussing poverty while eating slices of cantaloupe wrapped in prosciutto and swatting the mosquittoes away. We seemed a small group. And, though OHMH has made it's way through Boston and New York (how did I miss them in the city last year?!), it is still growing.

But, how right we should be involved. How good to know the collective lot of us, however small, can work to make a difference, however much. How appropriate that our combined salaries of not-for-profit types, and nursing aides, and teachers, and Hill worker bees, should be a worthy contribution to a community half a world away.

As we dreamt and discussed and pondered and hoped on that warm September evening, 32 once homeless girls in Mtwapa, Kenya were just waking up... going about their morning routines... dreaming and discussing and pondering, and, I must assume, hoping, too.

 

To learn more about the work One Home Many Hopes is doing in Kenya, or make a donation, go here.