"He wanted to know everything about us, everything about my father everything about our family. I took him to so many relatives. It was part of finding about his own identity."
Rita Auma Obama is a Kenyan-British community activist, sociologist, journalist, author, and half-sister of former President of the United States, Barack Obama. Obama serves as the executive chairwoman of Sauti Kuu Foundation, a non-profit organisation that helps orphans and other young people struggling with poverty in Kenya.
"I had really nobody in my family whom I could talk about these things with. This passion for making a difference, the passion for helping young people find out who they are, gain strength in their own identity, those were things I was struggling with as well. I realized very young that if I don’t do it myself, nobody can really do it for me. I think young people need to be helped toward that realization."
"I work for my own foundation, called Sauti Kuu (Powerful Voices) Foundation, which I started about two years ago. The focus of the work is to teach young people—girls, in particular—who are from underprivileged backgrounds, that there are valuable resources they can use to improve their lives before they look outwardly to see whether someone will give them relief food or clothing or all of the other things we give them so often in the humanitarian world."
"If it’s just about my brother, I’ll never be a role model."
"I felt a kinship with him automatically. I was very nervous and worried about not connecting immediately and then having to be in his home—because I was going to be staying with him. But when I met him it was so easy. We just started talking as though we’d known each other always, and that was actually something really special."
"Poverty is no excuse. Development aid has to be linked to economic development,"
"If I’m teaching young people to use their voices and be active in making their lives a success."