Kennedy Odede is a social entrepreneur, a New York Times best-selling author, and co-founder and CEO of Shining Hope for Communities (SHOFCO), a grassroots movement that catalyzes large-scale transformation in urban slums by providing critical services for all, community advocacy platforms, and education and leadership development for women and girls.
What else?
- Among SHOFCO’s accomplishments are setting up and running a free school for girls in the slum, making clean water and medical care accessible, and helping dozens of individuals start small businesses. Today, SHOFCO impacts over 300,000 slum dwellers across 10 urban slums in Kenya, and is the largest employer in Kibera.
- Kennedy was awarded the 2010 Echoing Green Fellowship, and was named to Forbes 30 under 30 list for top Social Entrepreneurs in 2014.
- He was nominated for The Future Africa Awards Prize in Advocacy & Activism in 2014.
- He is a member of the Clinton Global Initiative.
- His work has been featured by President Bill Clinton, Madonna, Beyonce, and on multiple occasions by Nicholas Kristof in The New York Times and his book A Path Appears.
- Kennedy’s own writing has appeared on the op-ed pages of The New York Times, CNN, Project Syndicate and The Guardian, among others.
- Kennedy is a Young Global Leader (YGL) at the World Economic Forum and an Obama Foundation Africa Leader.
- He is the New York Times Bestselling co-author of the book Find Me Unafraid: Love, Loss and Hope in African Slum, which he wrote with his wife and business partner, Jessica Posner.
- In 2018, SHOFCO became the youngest-ever organisation to receive the Conrad N. Hilton Humanitarian Prize, the world’s largest humanitarian prize awarded to nonprofits that have made extraordinary contributions to alleviate human suffering.
- Kennedy has won the Mohammed Ali Humanitarian Award for setting up an organisation scaling across Kenya’s slums with a model that links free schools for girls to holistic community services for all.
Kennedy Odede is the future!
