Changing the world – one project at a time
A former Sydney Emanuel School student has taken on the challenge of tackling global poverty by promoting empowerment and autonomy for the women of Kenya. She will relate her remarkable story at the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies plenum next week.
Genevieve Radnan
How many people do you know have aspired to build a kindergarten and women’s centre in Kenya? Genevieve Radnan, 23, has done it.
Her worldview is based on the axiom that if you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day; if you teach him to fish, you feed him for a lifetime.
As with many high school graduates, Genevieve used the year after school to travel the world. While volunteering in Kenya for six weeks, she was confronted by the appalling living conditions, grinding poverty and poor education opportunities for the local children.
Thus was formed Gennarosity Abroad – a not-for-profit organisation to provide education, employment, literacy, clean water, health and support to rural communities along Kenya’s Rift Valley region.
She began fundraising, with an initial target of $2000. Surpassing this figure, she then raised $15,000 towards the building of a classroom and various other amenities at what she named the Karunga Emanuel Kindergarten in honour of donations from Emanuel School.
Not content with that, Genevieve then embarked on an even more ambitious project – the construction of Grandma Jenny’s, a women’s training centre in the Kenyan town of Karunga. The centre educates women and girls over the age of 12, imparting such basic skills as English, maths, financial literacy and health education. Grandma Jenny’s aims to significantly reduce the incidence of gender inequality and underemployment, and the prevalence of transmittable diseases. Its longer-term objective is for its graduates to go on to become teachers, thereby creating a self-sustainable model.
In between all this, Genevieve has acquired a Bachelor of Nursing degree at the Australian Catholic University in the hope of using her qualifications to provide medical aid and, eventually, to build a medical centre in Kenya.
It’s not about trying to change the world, she says modestly; just to change the world for a few people.
What a wonderful humanitarian project undertaken by Ms.Radnan.
I am most concerned by the fact that over one million children are living in poverty in Israel in 2015.