Harambee Toto

In 2015, the Utopia Foundation in Traverse City, Michigan began an initiative called Harambee Toto (all together for babies) to improve early childhood outcomes in the Soweto East neighborhood in Kibera, Nairobi, Kenya -- the largest urban slum in Africa. Be Strong Families primary role was to increase family engagement with daycare providers by adapting the Parent Café model to the local context. This included translation into Swahili as well as training a local Parent Café team. We traveled there twice in the course of a year and continued providing technical assistance via Zoom for another year. As of 2020, before the pandemic, Cafés were still going strong! Read our blog for more.