The Mwelu Foundation

Welcome to a home of hundreds of thousands of people – Mathare Valley slum in Nairobi, Kenya. Mathare is one of the biggest slums in Africa and in many ways is like any other slum. There are many hard working people who are selling fresh produce, labouring and brewing illicit alcoholic drinks in order to sustain theirs families in the hardest of conditions.

Mathare is full of energy – walking through the slum you will hear energetic young happy children playing, crying babies and very loud music everywhere you go.

The sum of one dollar a day is the measurement of how poor a person really is. Someone earning less than one dollar per day is said to be living in abject poverty without the ability to sustain their own life and the lives of their family. Many people in Mathare consider themselves lucky to be earning even such a small amount of money.

Order Prints

Thank you for your interest in purchasing a print. We believe selling our photographs is a more sustainable means of lifting ourselves out of poverty than simply seeking donations.

Your order will be handled by Photobox, who will print and dispatch your items and collect payment on our behalf. How does this work?

Prices

*The price you pay includes Value Added Tax (VAT) and printing costs. Excluded in the price is postage and packaging which will depend on your location.

These prints are provided for non-commercial use. If you would like to reproduce one or more of our photographs for commercial purposes, please contact us with a brief description of your requirements.

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Hello...

The Mwelu Foundation is a youth project based in the Mathare Valley slum in Nairobi, Kenya. We use photography and film production to document our lives and communicate our problems - and our hopes - to the wider world. We have set up a library and are taking positive steps to improve our livelihoods by building essential life skills. Through our initiatives we also hope that we can begin to displace the myth that slums like Mathare are dead-end places with no potential or home-grown talent.
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