This past summer, Catherine Hanna, a Seeds For Hope volunteer, organized and ran a 2-day workshop at the Kibera Girls Soccer Academy, called "Poetry For Life". Over the course of the workshop, Catherine, the teachers, and the girls spent time examining themselves, their lives, and their community to create some fantastic works of honesty, beauty, and truth. This work has become part of a greater artistic and initiative by the girls of the school who continue to spend time using their talents, an exercise marking a rise in self-esteem and self-knowledge, and one that will prove to better the community around them.

As some of you may have read on the front page of the major news sites, Kenya is in crisis.   The recent elections of 2007 have divided the country into a battlefield of political and ethnic battles.  So much blood has been spilled in what was once a peaceful country and a pillar of democracy on the continent.    The leaders of both parties are manipulating the people and further dividing the country into ethno-political factions, where both are reaching for power.   While many are fighting for "equality and democracy" hundreds of people, mainly innocent civilians are being killed for their ethnicity.   Early this week, 300 people took refuge in a church in the western part of the country, and protesters surrounded the church and burned it to the ground with the people inside, and dozens were burned alive.  Streets have been closed down, thousands have lost their homes, and in total about 75,000 people have been internally displaced.   Businesses, homes, and churches have been burned to the ground.  There are food shortages, and people are beginning to grow hungry.