Kenya’s Wawira Njiru Wins The Cisco Global Citizen Youth Leadership Award

On December 2^nd, the Global Citizen community held a festival in Jo’burg, South Africa to celebrate their achievements thus far and to continue to create awareness on their vision. With headliners such as Beyonce, Jay-Z, Usher, Pharell Williams and Ed Sheeran, the benefit concert attracted millions from around the globe who were able to contribute towards the mission and vision of Global Citizen.

The Global Citizen community is an initiative started to take action on the world’s biggest challenges including extreme poverty. It seeks to build a movement of 100 million Global Citizens who will achieve the vision of ending extreme poverty by 2030, a vision fostered by Nelson Mandela.

One of the achievers celebrated at this festival was Kenya’s Wawira Njiru, the founder and executive director of Food 4 Education – an organization that has set up a feeding and mentorship program in over 2,000 underprivileged schools in Kenya. Wawira won the Global Citizen Youth Leadership Prize for her work in ending child hunger, an award that is sponsored by Cisco – a leader in IT, networking and cybersecurity solutions. Read more about her here – Wawira Njiru

Founded in 2012, Wawira, through Food 4 Education, has been able to champion for the eradication of child hunger in Kenya, thus allowing vulnerable and underprivileged children to access education. The Global Citizen platform will allow her to closely work with other leaders who share her vision including Cisco’s Chairman and C.E.O, Chuck Robbins and award-winning music sensation, Usher Raymond.

Leading campaigns such as #40foraplate, Wawira has pioneered this cause, spreading her message throughout the country and transforming lives. She has continued to receive recognition for her tireless campaign, with Global Citizen being her latest and possibly largest platform.

Embracing social media as its biggest tool and platform, Global Citizen seeks to change the lives of people around the globe through the action of high-level advocacy and the commitment of its partners and world leaders. The platform encourages contributors from all over the world to contribute through service rendered and volunteer programs that will raise awareness on global issues and work to a majority of world problems.

This year’s benefit concert, under the theme #Mandela100, was hosted by comedian Trevor Noah and media personality Bonang Matheba and was attended by global activists such as Naomi Campbell, Dave Chapelle, Danai Gurira and Gayle King.

With interests in numerous global issues such as girls and women, health, water and sanitation, education, food and hunger, the environment and finance and innovation, anyone can become a Global Citizen.

Speaking of community service here is How Safaricom Is Using Technology To Bring Economic Empowerment To Communities Around Kenya

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