Kenyan academic and business mogul Susan Mboya, the daughter of the late Economic Minister Tom Mboya and wife to former Nairobi Governor Evans Kidero, founded and runs an organization registered in the US identified as Zawadi Africa Education Fund.
According to the organisations' website, it was founded in 2002 and is modeled after the highly successful Kennedy-Mboya Africa Student Airlifts Program of the 1960s, pioneered by Tom Mboya and President John F. Kennedy.
The Kennedy/Mboya airlifts educated over 1,000 bright young East Africans who went on to become Africa’s post-independence leaders, some of the beneficiaries being the late Wangari Maathai (Nobel Peace Prize Laureate), and Barack Obama Sr.
The Zawadi Africa Educational Fund is described as a leadership development program that provides university scholarships and leadership development training to academically gifted but financially disadvantaged African girls.
This is done with a view to inculcating the spirit of leadership in the women who would then embark on changing their communities after completing their studies under the program.
"We believe in growing leaders. We seek to inspire others and are quick to identify other potentials. We provide opportunities for the African woman to grow her aspiration. We send them on journeys of self-discovery by providing them with opportunity exposure to leadership excellence," the organization explains its mandate.
According to Mboya's LinkedIn profile, the organization, since its inception, has provided over Ksh8 billion for 400 girls to study in prestigious universities in Africa and abroad.
It has partnered with top universities all over the world, including Arizona State University, Brown University, Columbia University, Havard University, Syracuse, Yale, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and the University of Toronto in Canada.
In Africa, the organization has partnered with Capetown University in South Africa, United States International University (USIU)- Kenya, Kwame Nkruma University in Ghana, Makerere University as well as Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology (JKUAT).
As of May 2012, the organization boasted 55 graduates who had been through the system on full sponsorship, with the majority of the students graduating with strong upper second-class and first-class degrees.
Peggy Mativo, a student at Havard University who benefitted from the program, was recognized by the Clinton Global Initiative Foundation after setting up the Promoting Access to Community Education Kenya (Pace Kenya) program in January 2013, a program that trains volunteers to teach in public schools in Kenya.
Margaret Mong'are, another beneficiary who is pursuing studies in Medicine at Stanford University, set up a school-based Learning and Mentoring program, Masomo Mashinani, that connects over 100 children with select mentors from local universities who offer guidance and tutoring while creating positive peer influence.
These are few among many women changing the society after receiving quality education courtesy of the fund.
