The first time Hope Murera met Mirriam Mueni, she brought her whole family. Her children, her sister, everyone.
“I wanted her to feel she was coming into a real space, not just a formal meeting,” Hope told me.
It was 2014. Mirriam was a teenager from Kasikeu, a rural village in Makueni County, Kenya. She had lost her mother at the age of nine and was raised by her grandparents and an uncle, subsistence farmers, for whom educating children was a daily struggle. Despite these challenges, Mirriam earned a scholarship to Starehe Girls Centre, one of Kenya’s most competitive secondary schools.
By Linda Latsko Lockhart, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Global Give Back Circle*