From starting a modest fundraiser for 25 school children, Wawira Njiru has become a social entrepreneur with a staggering 6,000 staff on her payroll, feeding 600,000 kids in Kenya every day with her organization Food4Education (F4E) an engagement for which she is being honored with this year's German Africa Prize. How did this transformation come to pass? The answer may be in her character.
Stubborn and hard-working, that's how Njiru sees herself: "It's hard to tell me something is not possible." Thinking back to how she began, she explained: "My dream then, my ambition was to feed 100 kids every day. I was 21 years old then, so also having an ambition of feeding 100 kids felt momentous. But now growing up, but also figuring out that you can do more, and just being obsessed with 'How much more can you do?
How much more can you do,' led me here." Wawira Njiru left her native Kenya after finishing school to study nutrition science in Adelaide, Australia. "I knew a lot of kids back home were not getting the education they need. At that time, I was learning about the impact of food, and I didn't realize how powerful food was," Njiru said.
"When you're doing a nutrition degree, that's when you really learn about the science behind food. And knowing that, especially for kids, it's so critical that they get nutritious meals." When she found out her friends at the university often had a few dollars to spare and were looking for ways to contribute, she connected the dots and started her first fundraiser. From there, the trajectory was set.
But the road was rough at times for the young woman she was, Wawira explained. Some people didn't take her seriously. "You have to find your believers," Njiru found out.
And furthermore: "You can't just go with your own name. You have to find someone to vouch for you or someone or something to validate your presence." Her degree certainly helped. But still, many men looking for jobs just didn't seem confident in working for a young woman.
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