Wealthy, influential political and business leaders, experts, celebrities — and the attendant press — love to jet around the world to luxurious, insulated venues such as Davos, Switzerland, where they meet to discuss and find solutions to the world’s problems.
Problems such as the hundreds of millions of people still living in extreme poverty.
Enter the first-ever World Poverty Forum — to be staged in the vast slum of Kibera, in the Kenyan capital city of Nairobi — where the world’s power elite will be invited to meet, greet and discuss solutions with actual poor people
The forum, brainchild of Kenyan national and social entrepreneur Kennedy Odede, who was raised in Kibera, will meet in January 2020.
“It is high time that the policymakers come to us, the people and the communities who are doing great work on the ground,” Odede told The Guardian.
The “Davos with the poor” will showcase local solutions practiced by people who experience poverty, in an attempt to create a bottom-up dynamic that will connect leaders with the many innovative ways that people on the ground can and are solving their own problems.
The challenges faced by residents of Kibera are profound. Between 500,000 and 1 million people live there, most on less than $1 per day. Disease and crime are rampant, and many residents lack basic services such as electricity or running water.
Source: The Guardian, BBC Newsday,