We've been talking about "Voiceless Children", the African-based not-for-profit, but who are they?
The organization was created in 2005 by Felix Masi, of Nairobi, and Susie Banfield, of Sun Valley, Idaho. One can only say that "destiny" brought these two together.
Felix is a grandmother-raised orphan who brings a great awareness and sensitivity to the plight of women who are widowed or abandoned to raise children on their own. Now in his mid-thirties, Felix has a family of his own. As a photojournalist, he has been able to take care of his family and devote huge amounts of time to caring for "grandmother families" in the slums of Nairobi and in the western provinces where his grandmother originally lived.
All the photos on this blog are recent pictures taken by Felix.
One of his many accomplishments, Felix was selected for a visiting Fulbright scholarship. He was the only photojournalist and Kenyan in a group of sixteen. During his month-long sojourn in Washington, DC, he met another "son of Kenya"... Senator Barack Obama.
And then there's Susie. Once you've met Susie, you can understand how these two dynamos managed to find each other from worlds apart. Susie had just finished a project on the Johnston Atoll in an extremely remote part of the Pacific when she first arrived in Africa in 2001. Third trip lucky... in 2005, Felix and Susie met. The seeds of Voiceless Children came to fruition and the rest is history and a lot of hard work.
In December 2006, another major intersection with destiny occurred. Qiujing Wong and Dean Easterbrook were researching their documentary, "A Grandmother's Tribe" and needed to find a point person in Kenya to arrange for logistics and to have on-the-ground savvy to make the right connections. That's right, Felix!
And so, Felix and Susie were brought into the fold of "A Grandmother's Tribe" and we, into their world.
We are honoured and privileged to be helping them through this very difficult time in Kenya's history.
We thank you for being part of our "global family" and appreciate your contributions!
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