MCDawn, Agape Hope for Kibera, Kenya
Creating a Generation of Givers in the Kibera Slums outside of Nairobi, Kenya
Meet Don Wasonga aka MCDawn, a 33-year old ChangeMaker born and raised in the Kibera slums outside of Nairobi in Kenya. He is a co-founder of Agape Hope for Kibera Community Based Organization, a nonprofit organization founded in 2016 and officially registered in 2010. Agape Hope for Kibera runs a variety of different community service programs. In this article, Don and I focused on the Agape Hope for Kibera Learning Centre.
Opened in 2022, the Learning Centre is run by Collins Wasonga (no relation to Don), Don, and other volunteer teachers and community organizers. The Learning Centre provides education, meals, and programming for dozens of vulnerable children, many of whom are orphans or children of single teenage mothers, in the Kibera slums.
The word Agape comes from the Greek meaning the highest form of love and charity. This value informs the service-driven life work that Don and his collaborators engage in to support their community:
I believe in love. When you love someone you do whatever it takes to make that person happy. I really love my community. Most of these children here are very sharp. These children have dreams and goals.
Don is a multi-talented artist who dances, sings, acts, and draws. He is also a dance choreographer. Professionally he is an emcee/MC and a tourguide with the Online Kibera Slum Tour which provides online and walking tours of Kibera. He along with his MC team donate a portion of slum tour proceeds as well as any other MC fees they earn to support Agape Hope for Kibera’s initiatives, including the Agape Learning Centre.
I take half of the money I earn and give it back to the community. I believe if you want to help someone, don't give fish, show them how to fish. That’s why I decided to give back through education. When they are educated, they will depend on themselves.
An MC in Kenya, I learned, is more than a Master of Ceremonies who facilitates celebrations and events like weddings, birthday parties and fundraisers. MC’s are also event organizers, program leaders, product promoters and advertisers. In fact, when we were doing our interview, he was just finishing up promoting a product in a van with speakers on top.
Transforming Childhood Pain into ChangeMaker Action
I asked Don what motivated him to get involved in community servie and specifically serving vulnerable children in Kibera. He’s not yet married and has no children of his own. What is it that makes him want to give back?
His answer was full and heartfelt. It was clear that he sees himself in all of the struggling children of Kibera. Don, born and raised in Kibera slums, was one of 12 children in his family and knows from direct experience how difficult it is to grow up in this environment.
When I was in school, I was really struggling. I didn’t have the privileges - I didn’t experience toys, outside to play, vacations. From a young age, I paid my own school fees. I only ate once a day, and sometimes went without food. I know how painful it was to pass through that.
In fact, the Agape Hope for Kibera Learning Centre is an offshoot of a much longer commitment to community and service that started back in 2006 when Don, Collins and other friends started doing community service work when they were teenagers.
There were older women who couldn’t walk to fetch water. So they fetched it for them. They conducted trash pick ups. They also collected used plastics, iron sheets, to sell them for small money.
I believe that change begins with me and that I don't need to wait for someone outside to help. I decided early on that I want to create a generation of givers. Children are always doing what their elders are doing. During COVID, we gave out food to people; people were starving. When children grow and see us giving, when they grow up they will do the same.
Agape Hope for Kibera Learning Centre
The Learning Centre, in operation since 2022 has a variety of programs, and serves over 35 children. The breakfast and lunch program is a cornerstone of their programming. Most of the children are vulnerable, orphans or children of single mothers.
Don’s role at the Learning Centre is Director of Entertainment. His job is to make sure that all talents are being nurtured. When the kids arrive at the Centre, many of them are arriving without having eaten and oftentimes from a home environment full of conflict, drugs, and alcohol. Don gives them music, dance, and singing as a way to express themselves and so they can forget their problems. He’s also responsible for other programming such as drawing, football (soccer) and chess.
Don explained that chess is a game for the rich in Kenya. When Kibera kids go to chess competitions and play with the rich kids, brings up negative emotions becaue they can see the stark difference between the haves and have nots. But, that the exposure to other people and different environments is positive.
The Learning Centre is staffed by volunteers, all of whom have different professions and are there at the Centre on their free time to teach.
Acute Needs: Food and Menstrual Pads
I asked Don what he thought the greatest need was for Agape at this moment. His answer? 1) funds to support the breakfast and lunch program at the Centre and 2) menstrual pads for the girls not just at the Learning Centre but all over the community.
Period poverty - the inability for women to purchase sanitary pads for menstrual hygiene - is a worldwide problem that has a cascading negative impact on girls finishing education.
In Kenya, more than 65% of girls and women cannot afford menstrual pads. As an aside, there are several other Kenyan ChangeMakers addressing this same problem in this series: Anne Okelo, Jenipher Nyanga, Deborah Achieng Nembi, and Calvin Juma (also of Kibera).
Don explained the particularly problem of period poverty in Kibera. First, it leaves girls literally using leafs for pads. Second, it means that girls are desparate for pads and often will turn to exchanging sex for money or pads directly. Sexual abuse and teenage pregnancy is commonplace as a result. Don explained that everyone knows someone to whom this has happened.
This persistent problem which perpetuates a cycle of teenage pregnancies and poverty is one of the reasons that they started the Learning Centre: to serve the children who are born to these teenage mothers and to serve the mothers themselves.
Don explained to me that he had his fellow MCs and Agape Hope for Kibera collaborators take donations whenver and wherever they can get them. For instance, when they are doing walking tours of Kibera Slums, they educate the tourists about the lack of affordable menstrual pads and people will often donate.
The Ubuntu Connection
One of the interesting things about this art and storytelling project is that when I started it, I didn’t have a ready list of ChangeMakers to interview. After my own personal list of connections was exhausted, I turned to friends working in the space of permaculture, arts and education in East Africa for referrals.
Don was a referral from Antoinette
of International. She had met him in 2023 and spoke highly of him and the Agape Hope for Kibera Learning Centre. Knowing this, I asked Don how it was that he came to know Antoinette Rootsdawtah and her husband Pato Banton, both legendary musicians in the international reggae scene, who are currently on a worldwide tour promoting their documentary called Spirit of Ubuntu (read more here on their Substack).Don explains that Antoinette and Pato had posted on social media that they were doing a tour of Kenya in 2023. Collins Wasonga of Agape Hope for Kibera reached out to them several times, hoping the duo would come visit them. Finally, says Don, Pato responded!
Don and Collins invited Antoinette and Pato to visit Kibera Slums and Agape Hope for Kibera shool and they accepted. Don tells the story:
At the time they arrived, the Learning Centre which is in the biggest market in Kibera called Toi, had just been burned by one of the cartels in the slums. People were suffering and others frightened. People had taken loans for businesses. When Pato came he gave out food. They fed 1,000 people that day giving out sugar and maize flour.
Since then, Don and Collins have not only stayed in touch with Antoinette and Pato. They have also received funding from their Ubuntu International Empowerment Fund to purchase a new home for Agape Hope for Kibera so they can move out of their rented space in Toi Market. While they haven’t found the location yet, they are diligently looking.
Future Goal - Kibera Talent Center
I asked Don what his future hopes are for the Agape Hope for Kibera Learning Centre. He had an answer ready!
My future goal is to establish a Kibera Talent Center where I can continue to use dance, acting, and art to encourage and support the talents of the youth. I would also want to establish a recording studio so that children at KTC could record their songs for free. Here it is very expensive to rent any studio space.
KTC would also have a “Pad Bank”, a free service providing menstrual pads to girls for free.
I always said, when I grow up, I want to be a changemaker. I want to create a generation of givers. I don't want them to go through the same thing I went to. Someone is supposed to sacrifice. I decided to be that someone who sacrifices.
Who is Don’s ChangeMaker?
My role model is Pato Banton, the international reggae artist who gave his all to the poor and quoted that “I am nothing by myself and when I do things just for myself, it means nothing."
Where in the World is Don?
This is a positive person changing the world with ❤️ love.
Muchas Gracias, MCDawn, por tu obra, Ubuntu para Todo el Mundo!!!
Kibera es muy, muy grande, hay que ayudar a mejorar la Calidad de vida de las Poblaciones, y que no haya hacinamiento....
Por eso proponemos PRIMMAR!!!! primmar.ar