An intelligent, articulate champion for social justice, Naomi is a fearless warrior for the less fortunate. As a PhD researcher at the University of Amsterdam she focuses on ethnic violence in slum communities such as Mathare Valley, a shanty town on the outskirts of Nairobi, Kenya.

Her journey into an unchartered realm began in 1989 when she met Dr. Wanjiku Kironyo, director of Maji Mazuri, and 6 youth from Mathare Valley, the second largest slum in East Africa. The group had been invited to participate in a conference on alternative didactic methodologies in the Netherlands. As part of their contribution to the conference the youth did a drama about their lives dealing with trauma's in the slums, a desolate and debilitating place. In a place murred with crime, prostitution and exploitation, the youth live on the constant brink of danger. The absolute extremes and the rawness that characterise Mathare are overwhelming, stigmatizing even cripling to the residents.

Naomi and her twin brother, Saul, spent lots of time with the youth while they were in Holland, showing them around and introducing them to the Dutch culture. The next year, 1990, she and Saul visited their new friends in Kenya. This was the start of a friendship and working relationship that now already has been going on for years.

Her experience working with Maji Mazuri Center and the youth in Mathare Valley changed her life, turning her from a rebillious difficult teen into a transformational leader.  Today she is a teacher, anthropologist and researcher with a passion for youth empowerment. She has been working with troubled teens in Mathare for the last 20 years and visited Kenya more than 16 times. She is committed to finding solutions for a stigmatized population and shares her strength with tremendous compassion and passion.

She is the founder of Duara Foundation (www.duara.org), an international partner to Maji Mazuri’s Education and Talent Program that currently guides 550 youth to a better future. Duara proposes a more dynamic and reciprocal form of international development cooperation and through this it hopes to contribute to a more equal world.  Naomi and her board members raised over $226 000 in less than a year towards a new community center in the heart of Mathare valley. The center will include a library, internet cafe, academic institution including a head start program for toddlers and clinic. For a child in Mathare valley, access to these  type of resources is transformational. She is devoted to supporting bottom-up, local community projects, believing people themselves are able to determine their own route to socio-economic empowerment but sometimes lack the means to do so.

Naomi overcame a debilitating shyness, channeling her initial challenges with leadership into service and the strength to confront social injustice. Her personal story demonstrates that fortitude is built from ferver and heartfelt passion. She has had the tenacity to push through hardship and formidable obstacles, pushing tirelessly to make quality of life accessible to powerful people the world seems to have forgotten.  Naomi has the uncanny ability to connect with your thoughts and a gift for communicating with people across of lines of color, creed and class.

She overflows with energy and devotes intense caring to fighting on behalf of a disempowered neighbor’s causes. With a powerful multicultural mindset, she shows through action that changing the world is not just an occupation, its a way of life.