Zawadi Education Fund raises Sh64m in one hour

A whopping Sh64.5 million was raised within an hour on Friday night to help bright but needy students access education abroad.

Under the Zawadi Education Fund spearheaded by Ms Susan Mboya Kidero, the amount was collected during a fund raiser in Nairobi.

The fundraiser was attended by various top personalities including Nation Media Group chief executive Linus Gitahi and businessman Chris Kirubi who was the master of ceremony.

Other key guests included Mr William Asiko, President of the Coca-Cola Africa Foundation, businessman Manu Chandaria, former Prime Minister Raila Odinga’s spokesman Salim Lone and Mr Isaac Awuondo.

“We have raised funds before but not to this scale,” Susan who is wife of Nairobi governor Evans Kidero told the Sunday Nation on phone.

Other organisations which participated in the annual event to send off the girls cum-fund raiser were Coca-Cola Africa Foundation, Nairobi Bottlers and Coca-Cola Central, East and West Africa Business Unit who gave a combined Sh10.5 million, Centum Investments Sh 5 million, Gem Apartments Ltd Sh4.25 million, Google Ltd Sh16.8 million. Commercial Bank of Africa gave Sh1 million and pledged to give a similar amount to Zawadi each year, while Nation Media Group pledged support valued at Sh 8.5 million. Mr Kirubi and his friends raised a combined Sh10 million.

Started in 2002, Zawadi is modelled on the Kennedy-Mboya Africa Students Airlifts Programme of the 1960s pioneered by the late Tom Mboya, Susan’s father. Among the beneficiaries of the airlift were Barrack Obama Snr, the current US president’s father.

The Kennedy- Mboya airlift saw over 1000 academically talented Africans from 5 countries being educated in the US and in turn becoming the first crop of African academicians.

Since its inception, Zawadi’s 230 beneficiaries have gained entrance and won full scholarships at 69 top colleges and universities in the United States, Canada, Ghana, Uganda and South Africa.

These schools include some of the world’s best: Yale University, MIT, Harvard University, University of Cape Town (South Africa), Kwame Nkrumah University (Ghana), Makerere University (Uganda) and JKUAT (Kenya).

Zawadi beneficiaries are picked on the basis of their academic strength (top one or two per cent in their class), financial need and demonstrated leadership abilities.

Susan outlined the funds success and exponential growth over the last 10 years, terming the next decade as the transformative decade for the girls and indeed the African continent.

“Having started with three students and a sponsorship kitty of Sh40 million in 2002, the fund has in the last 10 years facilitated full scholarships called at over Sh3.32 billion to over 230 girls.” She added the growth in scholarships received has been matched by a similar growth in partner schools from an initial two partnering schools to the current 69.

According to Susan, the success of the program has been built on a foundation of numerous complementary factors key amongst them the 100 per cent graduation rate of the Zawadi Girls and the embodiment of characteristics and traits ingrained in the Zawadi Africa scholars that makes them stand out as students and members of society.

“We take our girls through a rigorous induction program that prepares them for change and couples with our motto ‘Each one teach one’ we impress on them that their success will be the key that opens the door for the next applicant,” said Susan.

Terming the fund as an initiative that keeps on giving, Susan added that "Zawadi benefits do not stop at our direct beneficiaries; indeed over the years, Zawadi has created a full cycle of uplifting girls from primary school to university.

Zawadi Africa has given rise to numerous auxiliary programs, initiated and run by our very own beneficiaries that benefit girls and boys from primary school to college." Key amongst these programs are initiatives like Beyond the Classroom, Masomo Mashinani and PACE all run by Zawadi Africa scholars as a way of giving back to the community.

And it’s with this anticipation of multiplication of benefits that the Zawadi Africa Education fund has set forth an ambitious target of having 1000 students from 40 African countries and 400 partner schools by the year 2020.

“We believe this is possible and hence we are calling on members of the public and corporations to partner with is as we seek to raise money to educate these very needy girls and more importantly have expand this powerful force of change that is Zawadi Africa” said Susan.

Zawadi Africa Education Fund is a leadership development program that provides university scholarships, leadership development and life skills training to academically gifted but financially disadvantaged African girls, with an objective of developing a pipeline of young African women leaders.

Susan has a passion for improving the livelihoods of women in the society. It is for this reason that she started Zawadi Education Fund, a foundation that seeks to help bright but underprivileged girls to get tertiary education.

Susan is aware that picking only girls who have finished high school means that a large number of those who did not even make it to high school in the first place are left out.

“We have limited resources so we cannot help everybody,” she explains. “However, our girls know that after they have been through the Zawadi program, they have to give back to their community. We impress upon them to mentor young girls from their communities who would otherwise leave school and get married at a very early age so as to conform to societal expectations. Now that the Zawadi girls know that there is more to life than landing a husband and getting kids, they are able to encourage their younger sisters to fight for a better life for themselves.”

The most notable of this is the ‘Beyond the Classroom’ life skills program funded by USAID that has reached over 6000 girls by 2012.

Dr Susan is a trained pharmacist. She only practiced for 6 years before venturing into marketing. Today, she works for Coca Cola as the Group Director, Eurasia Africa, Women’s Economic Empowerment. Her position has enabled her to come up with the 5by20 project, an initiative that aims to economically empower 5 million women from all over the world by 2020.

“We started this project with the knowledge that women do so much more than men to develop their homes and the community at large,” she says. “Basically, we seek to give women a boost by involving them in projects that are beneficial to them and to the company as well.”

Coca cola does this by ensuring that a good number of its distributors across all regions are women. In addition, the company sources its raw materials (fruits) with a prejudice towards women suppliers. I am curious about whether this open bias towards one gender does not make for an ethical nightmare.

“It does,” she admits, “However, our policy is that we do not help women at the expense of men. We just try to award women more opportunities than they would have normally gotten.” Already, the project is bearing fruit in the countries where it has been initiated, with millions of women selling and distributing coca cola products. “India is one of our biggest success stories,” elaborates Susan. “We have issued the women with portable coolers from which they sell coke and other soft drinks.”

Although she comes from a family of wealth and privilege, Susan Mboya is happy to do her bit to help make the world a better place. “Growing up, I knew that I was privileged. My mother made sure I knew,” she continues, “she impressed upon me that I was lucky and that the least I could do was to try to give back since I have been blessed with so much.”

Her mother’s words must have formed the guiding principle for her life, so much so that Susan lists her as one of her role models. “The other one is my husband,” she says with a soft laugh. She describes him as one of the very few people in this world that inspire her.

When Susan is not coming up with more initiatives to give women a helping hand, you will find her immersed in one of Chimamanda Ngozie’s novels, whom she describes as one of her favourite authors.

Additional Reporting Jacqueline Kubania