Kenyan native Soiya Gecaga raises funds to provide Nairobi children with a preschool education at the local center named after her late boyfriend.
By Michael Aushenker / Special to The Malibu Times
Kenya native Soiya Gecaga, 37, capped off a two-week sojourn to Malibu with a fundraiser reception at the Dan Eldon Center for Creative Activism, located off Pacific Coast Highway atop the American Apparel building, which was named after her late boyfriend Eldon.
In 1993, Gecaga was dating Eldon, a Reuters News Agency-employed photojournalist, at the time of his tragic death at 22 while covering the conflict in Somalia. On June 15, in the spirit of Eldon’s personality, Gecaga stood before a packed room of about 50 people to raise awareness and funding for her nonprofit organization, “We the Change Foundation,” which, in a relatively short time, has already begun providing early-childhood education for underprivileged, pre-elementary school children in Nairobi.
As attendees enjoyed refreshments and appetizers, Gecaga shared her story and the important work she wants to accomplish via her nonprofit organization.
Gecaga is the granddaughter of Jomo Kenyatta, Kenya’s first prime minister and president after the country broke from British rule and achieved independence in 1963. The eldest among her siblings, Gecaga was only four when Kenyatta died while still in power, and she has a few memories of her grandfather, who always carried his trademark fly swatter as he ran the country.
“It became his symbol and he would raise it to rally the crowd,” Gecaga said.
Educated at Phillips Academy in Andover, Mass., and at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, Gecaga today divides her time between London, where she worked for many years as a corporate lawyer, and Nairobi, where her foundation’s school, the Mathare Early Childhood Education Centre, is based.
“I remember being a seven-year-old child and saying I want to be a lawyer, but I had this feeling that I got to where I was trying to achieve my whole life but something didn’t feel quite right,” she said.
What roused Gecaga to finally leave her job at a London law firm and put all of her energy into starting “We the Change” was the post-election tribal violence that broke out in Kenya in late 2007 and early 2008. Gecaga said she watched as “horrible scenes were unfolding.” People were afraid it would turn into another Rwanda situation.
“That was the moment that crystallized in me that I could no longer sit,” she said.
She quit her job and returned to Kenya, where she visited the slums of Nairobi and worked in a hospice with AIDS-afflicted children.
“I saw this band of children, 20 or 30 children unsupervised between the age of five and six,” she recalled. “Their families could not afford to put them through school, so they were left to their own devices.”
Gecaga took her academic education, and her re-education of her native country, and applied both to starting her foundation.
It was Gecaga’s life of privilege growing up that put her in the position to give back philanthropically. And young love Eldon had helped her emerge from her rarified bubble.
“I led a very sheltered life,” Gecaga recalled. “I was 14 when I first interacted with him. I was scared of homeless people. He brought me out of my shell and he encouraged me to talk to people no matter what they looked like and where they were from. He was always like that. Whoever he spoke to, everyone loved him, no matter who they were.”
And while her maternal grandfather made history as the independent Kenya’s first leader, her greatest inspiration, she admitted, was another relative.
“Many people focus on my grandfather,” Gecaga said. “Who I choose to focus on is my paternal grandmother, Jemimah Thoiya Gecaga. According to a tribal custom in Kenya, the first daughter is named after the father’s mother so I’m named after her. I feel it has been a blessing.”
Gecaga did not know her grandmother well but she feels she has carried a part of her all of her life.
“She had five brothers, she was the only girl,” she continued. “She was not educated because she was a girl. She educated herself and by the time she was 18, she had put herself through school and it culminated in her being the first Kenyan to sit on British Parliament in 1958 [before Kenya became independent]. I totally think that what my grandfather achieved is amazing, but can you imagine? As a black woman at that time [during British rule]?”
Through her foundation, Gecaga said, “Specifically, our goal is how to holistically take care of children. We’re benchmarking ourselves against the top preschools in Los Angeles, the top pre-schools in New York” with the Mathare School. What might cost $1,500 a month in America, “in our system, we will provide that level of care for $2,000 a year per child. They cannot afford that. They can only afford $1 to $2 a month.”
Hence the outreach. The $2,000 fee covers tuition, school materials, food, etc. for the entire school year.
Gecaga and her board of trustees have already put into action elements of her three-pronged plan: a school located in Nairobi’s slums; one in the rural area outside of the city in Northern Kenya; and a research center to educate and train instructors for both schools.
Working with a small staff at the moment, Gecaga hopes in five years to employ 68 teachers and grow the school to accommodate 500 students. Other “We the Change” goals include producing a documentary film and “creating a model that we can franchise throughout the country. If these children get that support in their early years in life, they will go to the best private schools [and] the Ivy Leagues.”
Still very connected to the Eldon family (who originated from Kenya and now reside here), Gecaga loves to visit Malibu twice a year.
Yet when Gecaga thinks of Malibu, she will always associate it with Dan Eldon.
“He was a very big inspiration to me,” she said. “My grandmother instilled in me the importance of education and Dan instilled in me the importance of kindness.”
More information on Gecaga and her foundation can be obtained online at wethechangefoundation.com