Day 1 in Kibera: The Awesomeness of the Design Monitoring and Evaluation Evolution

LitWorld's Creative Director, Dorothy Lee, is in Kenya to launch our data collection project alongside our partners The Children of Kibera Foundation (CoKF), Vera Solutions, and Jennifer Estrada. What follows is her first report from the field at LitWorld's Innovation Hub in Kibera, Nairobi, Kenya. We will post Dorothy's reports as they come in over the next few days while she is in Kibera.

We got to Children of Kibera early and stopped by the Innovation Hub space. The Earth Bench we built last summer is well worn and loved by the feet of many running and jumping children. The library is in good shape. Maureen, one of our inspiring LitClub Leaders, was in the midst of a read-aloud session with a group of students from a nearby school. They were little dears and she had them captivated.

Margot from Vera Solutions and Jen introduced the term "Design Monitoring and Evaluation" and the basic idea of our LitClub data collection project and pilot to the Kibera LitClub Leaders, Jeff, Prisca, Maureen, Geoffrey, Gertrude. They all took the draft of the survey and we had a discussion about the survey questions.

It was simply awesome.

I had a couple of moments where that was all I could think to myself: this is awesome. I could feel the project coming into existence around me. They were asking great questions, and bringing such interesting and informative feedback to us, it made me tingle. And then after we wrapped up, we got to immediately take our notes from the meeting and revise the whole survey before we forgot what anyone said, when it was all just fresh and bubbling away in our brains.

After we finished our debrief, we joined the Power Women Moms LitClub session for a few songs, a check-in, and lots of hugs. Their new salon is up and running next to their shop, the walls are painted with murals and they have thes most wonderful hair sinks in bright colors.

Sending love to you all from all these dear ones here, as well as from myself!

--Dorothy Lee, Creative Director, LiWorld

A Slam Poetry Workshop with LitWorld Friend Luke Nephew

Yesterday a great friend of LitWorld, Luke Nephew, came to the office to lead the spring interns in a slam poetry workshop. For the workshop, Luke led us through written and spoken exercises that tested the ideas of a conventional classroom. We wrote about educators in our lives, and listened to an awesome recitation of Luke’s own poem “Professional Momma.” After the workshop, we discussed the importance of encouragement, the need to create trust within the group, and the power of vulnerability.

In the words of one of the other interns, the workshop was a “mental message.” It gave us a space to reflect on what we had learned from their internship at Litworld as well as pick up new skills to bring back to the LitClubs. Thank you Luke for taking the time to share your words and ideas with us and the LitWorld staff!

--Abigail Schneider, LitWorld Intern

Luke Nephew is LitWorld’s Intergenerational LitClub Leader and runs the Circle of Peace LitClub at The Hebrew Home in Riverdale. He is a member of The Peace Poets, a group of artist educators committed to teaching with a focus on our collective liberation. Their goal is to create safe spaces that allow us to deconstruct race, class, and gender as a community.

An Afternoon with LitWorld Board Member Chernor Bah

Throughout the first three weeks at LitWorld, my fellow interns and I have met a slew of inspiring and captivating affiliates. One after another, the staff introduces us to magnificent people who gracefully share their stories. On Wednesday, Natasha and I had the privilege of meeting Chernor Bah, a member of the LitWorld Board of Directors. As we introduced ourselves on Skype, Chernor asked that we each answer the question “if you could change the world in one way, what would that be?” When his pixelated face told us he would spread the education and empowerment of women and girls, I was hooked.

As a teenager growing up in wartime Sierra Leone, Chernor had the idea to collect the stories of his peers, whose voices, unless they were involved in a horrific incident, went unheard. Amazingly, he turned this idea into action by forming the Children’s Forum Network and curating his country’s oral history. He compiled these stories with the hopes of youth voices shaping policy. As he has aged, Chernor has collected stories internationally and pursued similar ends with his dissertation. Chernor possesses a contagious idealism (that can even be transmitted through Skype). Speaking with him, I could understand the delicacy with which he treats youth narratives and how deeply he cherishes them.

At the end of our discussion, Chernor offered to answer any question we may have. Natasha asked why he singled out women’s and girls’ education. A self-professed feminist, he explained that while growing up, the strength of the women around him—his mother and two older sisters—always impressed him. However, even though he believed his sisters were smarter than he, they had fewer opportunities to cultivate their intelligence. Witnessing this unfairness inspired him to support education.

What I found most impressive about Chernor is his ability to transform his own experience into activism. In the worlds of second-wave feminists, he has truly made the personal political. Despite the difficulty of executing that transition, Chernor makes it appear seamless. His appetite for justice is insatiable: by not accepting the inequities he has confronted, Chernor has made the world more accurately reflect his own ideals. Do not be complacent when you could be compassionate.

--Susannah Rosenfield, LitWorld Intern

Be the Story. Build Your Story

I spent Tuesday afternoon with my fellow interns helping out with thank you notes to LitWorld donors. If you’ve never seen a LitWorld envelope, printed on the bottom, left corner of each one is “Be the story.” As I stuffed, sealed, and stamped envelopes, the power began to drain from the message and distanced me from the meaning. Be the story became a logo rather than an ethos.

As part of the internship, each of us helps facilitate LitClub programming. Every Tuesday evening, the five young women of our Harlem Teen LitClub gather at the office. On this particular Tuesday night, two guests joined us: a survivor of Rwandan genocide, Yvette, and a Holocaust survivor, Lillian. After eating dinner, the Teen LitClub members, a handful of staff, including, Pam, Brooke, Madison, and I sat at the round table to hear Yvette’s story. Now, I won’t attempt to paraphrase Yvette’s heroic journey, but know that as she shared her triumphs, and Lillian interjected to intertwine their narratives, few eyes stayed dry. Regardless of tears, everyone was rapt with these women’s delivery and wisdom. Their tales resonated with us all.

As Yvette and Lillian addressed their transformations from war-surviving immigrants to successful women, they emphasized that each person has their struggles. Even though these women lived through the unimaginable, the harrowing, the most difficult to process events, both asserted that they built their stories. The weight of their pasts strengthens the success of their presents.

On the subway home, I attempted to delineate Be the story and Build your story. My mind desperately wanted to fit them into a neat binary. But as I let my thoughts tumble, I realized they are not a binary but a symbiosis or a cause and effect. (Truthfully, I am not sure yet.) Building your story takes immense strength. Lillian and Yvette’s unwavering fortitude speaks to their effort and resilience. I am beginning to think that as you build your story, you will also be your story. Both women retrospectively reframed incremental change into lifelong achievements.

During the genocide in Rwanda and World War II, propaganda in media called the Tutsi snakes and cockroaches and the Jewish people pests, and lice. Others began to conceptualize these two ethnic groups that way, partially excusing or validating the horrible hate and violence. Conversely, LitWorld tells LitClub members how capable they are. Praise, too, can be infectious and outlook-altering. Let the power affirmation outweigh defamation. Validate yourself and others. Build your story. Be your story.

--Written by LitWorld Intern Susannah Rosenfield

Reflections from the Circle of Peace Intergenerational LitClub

In the Circle of Peace LitClub at the Hebrew Home in Riverdale, New York, we bask in the poetry of growth and gratitude. Personally, I'm humbled by the brilliance of every single intergenerational poetry cypher that results in mixing the teenage genius of the young men from the Children's Village and the warm wisdom of the elders from the Hebrew Home. What a gift! Everyone is giving and receiving.

An emotional piece about missing a child or a parent instantly reverberates in our circle. We share love here, but in a very honest way, we also share longing. Our time together is spent sharing our experiences, reflecting on lessons learned and just being who we each are. We laugh and cry our way through composing group poems.

On the second to last day of 2012, we gathered in our circle in the quiet library. Our opening check in was full of positive words. These translated into a poem full of different things we have learned. The next session, now in 2013, gave our poets a chance to combine their powers to create a piece about the way we act on the wisdom we find. Many lines reflected the very human desire to stay patient despite the enormous yearning to see and feel what we want right now.

Somehow our group's experiences and ideas, though extremely varying, weave together into something beautiful every time. It's like magic. Our form of magic: poetry.

-- Written by Luke Nephew, LitWorld's Intergenerational LitClub Leader

Luke Nephew is a member of The Peace Poets, a group of artist educators committed to teaching with a focus on our collective liberation. Their goal is to create safe spaces that allow us to deconstruct race, class, and gender as a community. Click here to learn more about The Peace Poets.