Mama Sarah Obama set up library for community

Sarah Hussein Obama, grandmother to U.S. President Barack Obama, is escorted at Kisumu International Airport in the western city of Kisumu, July 24, 2015. [REUTERS/Moses Eshiwani]

Mama Sarah Obama has left behind legacy projects that are a culmination of her lifetime service towards helping orphans, widows and impoverished families feed and educate their children.

Sarah, who was the grandmother of former US President Barack Obama, said her joy was to see orphans through university.

“There are many children that I have helped educate, some of them at University of Nairobi, Moi University and Bondo University,” she told an international media house.

“These are orphans who I have helped pay their school fees, and now it’s my joy to see them in the universities about to graduate. There’s a lot of success stories, and it just makes me happy and keeps me going,” she added.

In September 2014, two Worldreader project managers from the nearby Siaya Community Library conducted an e-reading community event that Mama Sarah attended.

Fight social ills

She was inspired by the e-readers as educational tools to begin the Sarah Obama Library, where she established a Worldreader e-reading programme for the community.

She partnered with Worldreader to deliver more than 7,000 life-changing e-books to the Sarah Obama Library. These were 35 e-readers, each loaded with 200 e-books.

Sarah believed that all the residents needed was books and knowledge to unlock their potential.

She also established an educational campus in the heart of Kogelo village in Siaya County. The project comprises secondary and primary schools, and an early childhood development centre.

According to President Obama, every child had the right to education and deserves the chance to learn and thrive in an environment that is enriched by the latest technology.

In recognition of her work to support education, Sarah was honored by the UN in 2014 with the inaugural Women’s Entrepreneurship Day Education Pioneer Award.

ODM leader Raila Odinga yesterday said: “Mama Sarah utilised her grandson President Barack Obama’s rise to promote the education of girls and fight social ills through her foundation.”

Siaya Governor Cornel Rasanga said the county had lost a caring mother, who had passion for doing good to the less endowed in the society.

“Today there are more than 5,000 community members who have access to these books. She never obtained formal education, but she believed strongly in the transformation agenda that entailed education empowerment,” he said.

“Her life was marked with years of feeding and clothing children orphaned by HIV/Aids. She established her foundation to enable other less privileged members of the society to succeed,” the governor added.

Mama Sarah was also the patron of the Safeguard Orphans and Widows Organisation, a not-for-profit platform that supported widows, orphans and youth groups to realise their full potential through training and self-employment opportunities.

 

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