How Kakenya Ntaiya turned pain into progress

Philanthropists and global development donors have made a lot of promises about supporting local leaders and community-based organizations. But their insistence on finding scalable models might be getting in the way of a simpler achievement: helping people.Kakenya Ntaiya is a one-woman case study in persistence. As a girl in southwestern Kenya, she underwent the traditional Masaai practice of female genital mutilation — a precursor to marriage and motherhood.But she negotiated with her father to stay in school, secured a scholarship to attend college in the United States, and used her education to scrutinize the very cultural practices that she — and the other women in her village — were born into.As the founder of Kakenya’s Dream, a nonprofit organization, Ntaiya has returned to Kenya to open up spaces for discussion of cultural taboos — and educational opportunities for thousands of girls. Ntaiya joined the Theory of Change podcast to share her experiences navigating complex community politics, pushing for cultural change, and confronting the blind spots in modern international philanthropy that get in the way of improving people’s lives.