Kenyan Changemaker and Dancer Moesha Kibibi

When Moesha Kibibi was a young teen growing up in the slums in Kenya, she was kicked out of her Muslim household because her family frowned upon her passion for dance. At first, she lived on the streets and sold groundnuts to support herself. Over time, Kibibi was able to rent a small, 10-by-10 room where she took in and provided shelter to other young girls living on the street.

Life in the Kenyan Majengo slums was anything but easy for the young women sharing Kibibi’s tiny room. They had to overcome the challenges of poverty, sexual violence, and, in some cases, single parenthood as teens. But Kibibi continued to dance, and it was dance that eventually provided an avenue for a better life.

As she won dance competitions and rose to fame as a member of one of Kenya’s most popular dance troupes, FBI, she continued to mentor and help other young girls. “I bought them food, clothes, and sanitary towels and even tried contributing to their rent with the little money I had,” said Kibibi. Eventually, she formalized her efforts by forming the Divas Power Initiative. “The word Diva means to be a beautiful, strong, ambitious woman,” said Kibibi in an email interview during her recent visit to San Francisco. “I wanted to be an example and show these girls that they can make it no matter what.” Currently, the Divas Power Initiative is supporting around 3,000 girls across Kenya.

As part of her mentoring, Kibibi has been able to help many young girls start and graduate from school. Some of the girls Moesha has supported through the initiative have even been able to travel to the United States to pursue higher degrees of education. Kibibi has also been able to help the young mothers she mentors to open up small businesses using the money she has made from dance. When asked what her 15-year-old-self would think of the work she is doing today, Moesha Kibibi thinks her younger version would be “super proud” and “amazed” of everything she has been able to accomplish and of all the young girls she has been able to help. “The hardships and situations I went through at a young age made me who I am today,” says Kibibi. “And that’s how I realized that because of my experiences and my perseverance, I can be the reason of change.”

Thank you, Moesha!

Comments

My Letter to Hillary

Dear Hillary Clinton, My name is Elena, and I am 12 years old. I currently live in California, and am in the seventh grade. I have been a tremendous fan of yours since 2008 when you ran against President Obama in the Primary Election. My parents would gather the family, (then just my Mother, Father and I) and sit in front of a very old antenna TV to watch the Democratic debates and convention. I’d like to think that I, only 4 years old at the time, would speak with them intelligently about the political issues being addressed among the candidates, but it was not so. I barely understood what half your words meant, much less the importance of the event taking place on the screen. It all sounded awfully boring to four year old me, but I didn’t care. I liked to watch. Why? Because I thought you were great. Of course, I didn’t understand how great at the time, but pretty great. Great enough for me to sit at the table and draw detailed pictures of you in your orange pantsuit.

Stress Among High School High-Achievers: Filmmaker Debbie Lum on "Try Harder!"

Everybody in the San Francisco Bay Area knows about Lowell High School. Founded in 1856 and the alma mater of Broadway star Carol Channing, scientist Dian Fossey, and Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, Lowell is among California’s highest-ranked public high schools. Up until 2020, eighth graders seeking admission to this academic magnet school needed near-perfect grades and high scores on either the California-administered standardized test or the Lowell entrance exam. When I was admitted to Lowell as an eighth grader, I was ecstatic. It felt like a major achievement. In the end, however, I chose to attend a very different kind of school. My boarding school is just as selective as Lowell (the acceptance rate is in the single digits) but it has less than 250 students — tiny compared to Lowell, which has nearly 3,000. The demographics are different, too. While my school is predominantly white and wealthy (I’m part of a small cohort of Latino students on scholarship), Lowell is 59% As

Modern Day Abolitionist Nancy O'Malley

Alameda County District Attorney Nancy O’Malley was recently awarded the Modern Day Abolitionist Award from San Francisco Collaborative Against Human Trafficking (SFCAHT). During a recent online video interview, she told me about her involvement in human trafficking, her career, and her advice for young change-makers. How did you first become interested in fighting human trafficking? When I was a young prosecutor in 1996, I was assigned a case that involved a 12-year old girl who had been sexually assaulted and raped by a 50-year-old man. She started telling me her story and told me she had a 39-year-old boyfriend who took her out on the streets of Oakland and was selling her eight or 10 times in a night. When the police found her, the 50 year old man who had paid to have sex with her had raped her. That’s when I realized she was talking about trafficking. We didn’t even have a law in California then. That’s how I first learned about it. I started getting a be

Elena Blogs for a Change

Search This Blog