Associate Professor of Management Meg Warren is drawing from her decades of research in positive psychology and workplace allyship for her latest work devoted to improving the lives of teenage mothers in Nairobi, Kenya.
Warren recently returned from seven weeks in Nairobi working with CFK Africa, an NGO focused on empowering youth in the massive Kibera informal settlement, the largest slum in Africa. CFK Africa’s Funzo Project supports teen mothers with education assistance, job training, violence prevention, and psychosocial support.
“My role has been to observe the sorts of work that they’re already doing and help them develop their curriculum and take it to the next level to solidify their work,” Warren said. “The part of all this work that I’m particularly interested in is how they’re engaging boys and men as part of the solution.”
In addition to supporting women and girls, CFK Africa enlists men and boys as active partners in preventing gender violence and fostering the wellbeing of women and girls through education and community building.
They work with slum landlords to emphasize their roles as community leaders with a moral and legal obligation to prevent and report violence in their multi-family housing compounds. They also work with men who drive “boda boda” motorbike taxis and boys in youth programs for sports and the arts. CFK Africa builds peer mentoring groups for young men facing the tremendous cultural pressure to find enough economic success to support their whole families — and often find a pathway out of the slums.
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