Growing Up in Cities: a presentation in Kibera slum

Again, a huge interesting experience to share.... that I will have to write later...

Briefly, this morning I went with two new Aussie friends to meet up with a class from Cornell U. (my alma mater) who was presenting a project in Kibera slums, one of the largest in Africa. Last week I learned that a Cornell action research urban planning class was doing a project with youth in Nairobi. Today, I joined up with them to see their final presentation. Actually, NONE of the Cornellians spoke -- only the Kenyan Youth did... very cool.

I took pages and pages of notes… it was a very interesting experience: an American university working with a Kenyan youth group (from Kibera slum), who then interviewed kids age 10-15 (from Kibera) about what they liked, didn’t like and what they wanted for their village (a 70,000 person section of the 700,000 person slum). Today, they presented their findings to folks from Kibera, UN people, “dignitaries” like the Minister of Youth, and random others. The layers here are complex, which I’m not going to get into now. Later I found out that the professor was actually one of the “world leaders” in participatory planning… wrote “the book that everyone uses.” Hmmm, interesting….

Oooooh there’s just so much to say.

Yeah, and then there’s the experience of witnessing a slum for the first time. Of course, I pretty much knew what it would feel/look/smell like… but still, pretty intense.