Although his youth in Nairobi’s Kibera slum presented some very daunting challenges, David Ochieng managed to find inspiration and salvation through the arts, and he’s now striving to create similar paths for others. As an up-and-coming fashion designer with his own label, Lookslike Avido, he is using his platform and resources to uplift the community and cultivate its many inherent talents. Through his vocational training program that he began, Ochieng equips young mothers and those with hearing disability with tailoring skills. He believes that when you empower a woman, you are building the whole nation. He has started mentoring fifteen trained women — eight have hearing disability while seven are young mothers. Aside from the vocational training, he has taken upon himself to pay school fees of the bright pupils in his community. He mostly targets the orphans whose parents succumbed to HIV/AIDs virus. He says these students, if not helped, might end up on the streets and succumb to peer pressure resulting in mistaken identities and even lose their lives.
SOURCE: OKAYAFRICA