It was a Saturday morning like any other to me and I was going about my normal business. My day was interrupted by a phone call from the head of my Landscaping department, telling me a pregnant woman was in labor in the park, and asked that I come right away.

Some of my landscape workers, former ex-Street boys, were by the highway waiting to flag me down. They led me into the park by foot, since traffic would have put my arrival much later. Two women in the park had taken control of the situation delivering a beautiful baby girl to a laboring young woman. Within seconds, the baby was turning blue and the only thing to wrap the baby in was a head scarf. By this time, I held the baby, covered in blood, as the two women delivered the placenta. Read the rest of this entry »

I was born on the island of Mombasa and my first career was in the hotel industry. Working hard, I reached the highest position I could attain as a woman – Sales and Marketing Manager by 1989. However, I needed more. I was 25 years old, still living with my parents. I knew that I wanted a career more than I wanted to be a wife. I understood that hard work doesn’t just earn money to pay the basic bills but also allows a person to have some good things in life like a great car, pretty clothes, a nice apartment and more.

I believe that when we make decisions or chose various paths in life like careers, it is like planting a seed. The continued thought and efforts thereafter serve as the germination process. With time and great care in life, you would not only have grown a tree but also the flowers and fruit it bears. Even with just the tree alone, it would be worth the different paths chosen in life.

You might leave that tree you have grown alone to plant another or you may decide to chop it down. When it comes to choosing a career, I believe you have to think through what type of “tree” you want to plant and ensure you want to instill the time and effort, providing the budding room and ingredients, for it to grow strong and tall.

Time is precious because it goes by so fast. Don’t plant the wrong career “tree.” It can be costly, not only of time but of money as well. It takes time for that “tree” to take root and grow strong. Before planting that seed, map out a plan for your career. When you are ready, plant that career seed and hope as it grows into a fruitful, blossoming tree filled with fruits to sustain not only you but your loved ones and even society at large as well.

Join me in any of the projects underway at Esther Passaris site to plant that seed of hope which will blossom into a tree full of fruits to be partaken by others!

16.5 MILLION KENYANS LIVE IN POVERTY. That is why we should care.

Well it’s very simple – DO WE WANT A REVOLUTION? ARE WE VICTIMS OF CRIME? ARE WE LIVING IN FEAR OF CRIME? DO WE CARE TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE? DO WE CARE ENOUGH TO SHARE?

Now don’t get me wrong. I don’t mean we spoon feed the less fortunate. But when one is in ICU you have to feed them until they have regained their own strength and that is what we have to do. This blog is about knowing the driver and the direction to where I feel we should be going together. Join me as a passenger and when I tire take the wheels as this bus has to get to its destination with all the passengers content!

I am sure some of you are reading this and going I pay my taxes, I tithe, I help my extended family, I give a few coins every month to the poor on the street, I employ a few people etc etc . I know you do! But look around you, in your neighborhood there is a slum. It is growing bigger, the conditions are getting worse, and all our collective effort this far has not made visible difference.

A recent study that we commissioned through Adopt A Light on the impact of the lighting in the slums posed the question “how do you feel about the rich. The answer went like this “they don’t care about us, we don’t exist for them after we done the slaving for them”

I see a relationship between the violent crimes and this perception. I see crime increasing and the youth continuing to being gunned down. These young men are children, fathers, brothers, and providers of their family and no matter how hard we judge them, they are a loss to someone who will have a bone to pick with us if not now, in the future?

Besides poverty, hatred, there is another reason why crime is escalating and that is drugs. Drugs are consumed so readily among the poor, damaging the brain, once addicted! They will kill for it! Many people who have been car jacked say the same thing, the men where young, educated, and stoned.

So I have put together this website and many others sites that I will unveil to you in time, as a platform for you and I to connect and drive this vision to a bigger picture of a Perfect Kenya by 2015.

When it comes to poverty we have to take the same approach to invoke the need and the urgency to take action through a lifetime commitment to be part of the solution!