Carolina for Kibera (CFK) inspires and nurtures youth leaders in the slum of Kibera, Kenya through a unique model of participatory development.  CFK recognizes the youth of Kibera as resilient, wise, innovative, and eager to lift their community above the poverty and violence that plagues it.  CFK's long-term initiatives provide youth opportunities to learn and serve while addressing a wide range of community needs including healthcare, education, waste recycling and reduction, HIV/AIDS testing and counseling, and girls' empowerment.  CFK's model of participatory to fight abject poverty, and prevent ethnic, gender and religious violence has been internationally recognized, earning awards as a Time Magazine and Gates Foundation "Hero of Global Health" and the 2008 Oklahoma City National Memorial Foundation's Reflections of Hope Award.  CFK is a major affiliated entity of UNC based at the Center for Global Initiatives.

Salim Mohamed Salim Mohamed co-founded and served as the Executive Director of Carolina for Kibera for eight years. At the age of 16, he was involved in the development of MYSA - the largest youth sports program in Africa based in the Mathare slum of Nairobi.  Salim has helped launch community based sports and development programs in Ghana, Gambia, and Nigeria and presented at the International AIDS Conference. He serves as a director for Shoe 4 Africa, an advisor to Global Education Fund and a YES! facilitator.  A TED Africa Fellow, he is currently pursuing a master's degree at the University of Manchester.

Rye Barcott  While an undergraduate on an NROTC scholarship at UNC-Chapel Hill in 2001, Barcott founded CFK with the late nurse Tabitha Atieno Festo and community organizer Salim Mohamed. Barcott served five years in the Marine Corps before earning a combined MBA and MPA at Harvard as a Reynolds Social Entrepreneurship Fellow and a member of the Harvard Endowment's Advisory Committee on Shareholder Responsibility.  In 2006, he was named an ABC World News Person of the Year.  A TED Fellow and member of the UNC Chancellor's Innovation Circle, Barcott is writing a book that juxtaposes community organizing and counter-insurgency (under contract, Bloomsbury Publishing).

Fahamu is committed to using ICTs to support the development and growth of a powerful social justice movement that is committed to self determination in Africa. But given poor access to the internet in most of Africa, such ambitions have not been easy to realise. I will be discussing Fahamu's experiences in Africa of using ICTs in distance learning, the development of Pambazuka News, podcasts, film documentaries, mobile phone initiatives, and the book publishing program ‘Pambazuka Press', and will touch upon some of our ambitions in the future, especially in the the development of an interactive community on the Pambazuka 2.0 platform that is currently being developed.

Firoze Manji, a Kenyan with more than 30 years experience in international development, health and human rights, is founding Executive Director of Fahamu - Networks for Social Justice, a pan African organisation with bases in Kenya, Senegal, South Africa and the UK. Fahamu aims to support the building of progressive pan-African social movements by stimulating debate, discussion and analysis, building through training a culture of respect for human rights and human dignity, supporting social justice advocacy and publishing and disseminating information using both new and conventional media. 

Manji has previously worked as Africa Programme Director for Amnesty International; Chief Executive of the Aga Khan Foundation (UK); and Regional Representative for Health Sciences in Eastern and Southern Africa for the Canadian International Development Research Centre (IDRC).

He is a member of the editorial board of "Development in Practice", a member of the steering group on the campaign for the ratification of the protocol on the rights of women in Africa (Solidarity for African Women's Rights), and is a member of the International Advisory Board of the Centre for the Study of Global Media and Democracy, Goldsmiths College, University of London.  
 
As founder and editor in chief of the prize-winning pan African social justice newsletter and website Pambazuka News, he oversees the production by a pan-African community of more than 1800 citizens and organisations - academics, policy makers, social activists, women's organisations, civil society organisations, writers, artists, poets, bloggers, and commentators, with a readership estimated at over 500,000, and a website with more than 55,000 articles and news items on social justice in Africa.

Also he is commissioning editor of Pambazuka Press / Fahamu Books, a pan African publisher of books on freedom and justice in Africa.

Currently a Visiting Fellow in International Human Rights at Kellogg College, University of Oxford, Manji holds a PhD and MSc from the University of London, and a BDS from the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne.

The lecture is preceded by a workshop at 10am in the same location. For additional information please access the DLCL site listing here.