Our Vision
We aim to free our communities from poverty by focusing on mentorship and empowerment

Our Mission
Sauti Village is working to equip children out of poverty across African countries from a culturally empowered lens. Sauti Village does this by partnering each child with an African mentor to empower them through mentorship and connecting them to relevant talent programs.

 

Sauti Village is a non-profit organization aiming to free communities from extreme poverty with a focus on mentorship.
Sauti is a Swahili Word which means Voice. Our aspiration is to give a voice to the underserved and underprivileged in our communities.
Our goal is to equip children growing up in extreme poverty to break cycles of poverty and move on to empowerment. There is no one way to tackle the subject of poverty, but we believe that if you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day, but if you teach a man to fish, he will feed for a lifetime.
This is the reason why at Sauti Village we are adopting the model of mentorship.

What inspired the formation of Sauti Village?
Sauti Village was founded by Jey Mbiro as a result of growing up poor and surrounded by abject poverty in one of the largest slums in Africa, Mathare slum in Nairobi Kenya. Born in the slums, he was already born into hopelessness, which contributed to a lack of confidence and motivation. Mathare slums is the second largest informal settlement in Kenya after Kibera. It has a long history of existence and is currently home to 206,564 people according to the National Housing and Population Census (2019). Mathare is characterized by unsafe and overcrowded housing, elevated exposure to environmental hazards, high prevalence of communicable diseases, and a lack of access to essential services, such as sanitation, water and electricity. Residents in Nairobi’s slums frequently suffer from tenure insecurity, while widespread poverty and violence further increase their vulnerabilities. Yet residents are also resilient and entrepreneurial, politically organized and have a range of skills that allow them to survive in one of the most difficult urban environments in East Africa.
For most in the slums, education is a luxury and going without food for days is a norm.

Most children are born into single-parent households where the parent is not always present for the child, and most end up fending for themselves at a very young age. In the case of Jey, he started fending for his family by becoming a street beggar at the age of 8 years old. Whatever little he got in the streets, he would bring to his family, and they would have food for the day. At the tender age of just 8 years old, he had become a breadwinner for his family. When begging was not forthcoming, he joined a group of petty thieves in the streets and as was expected in the slum community he grew up, he started a life of crime that consequently led him to prison at the age of 9years old.

In his formative years, Jey did not have anyone who he could look up to for wisdom and direction in life.
Luckily, when he got into his teenage years, he got enrolled in a church program for boys where they got mentors and people who would teach them about life and opened his eyes to other opportunities that were available for him. This utterly changed the direction of his life. This was the turning point for his life. Fast forward to date, he is now a motivational speaker and has helped inspire others to give back to their communities.

Meet Our Partners

Sauti Village has partnered with the following organizations:

What problem is Sauti Village trying to solve?