A few years ago, while training a group of enthusiastic young storytellers, mostly photojournalists and documentary photographers, at the Kibera Town Centre, I found myself asking some critical questions. Every day after summarizing the sessions, I wondered where they would take all the stories they were about to produce, because I was certain that in the next few years, they were going to generate a massive amount of work.

But a challenge remained: not all of them were going to find full-time employment as photographers in the traditional sense, and not everyone could contribute to the few available media agencies. Over the past few years, I’ve been asking myself: How can we better utilize the visual assets we archive on our local drives? How can this work be made accessible to the very community that needs it most? And most importantly, given our collective capacity, how can we tell these stories in their entirety?

With the dynamic shifts occurring in visual journalism today, it is becoming increasingly vital that we harness the power of local storytelling. We are a collective of photographers, documentary visualists, photojournalists, writers, and designers eager to curate formats and tones that champion local narratives.

The website will feature a bi-monthly front-page overhaul while keeping previous projects neatly archived and accessible to the public. Historical and contemporary information about Kibera and Nairobi in general remains scattered and largely unfiltered; this inaugural launch outlines the precise direction we intend to take. Our initial issues will focus heavily on profile features to establish a clear blueprint for future editorial references.

We realize how demanding it is to run a platform of this scale. If you are passionate about developing local media, sharing skills, or engaging with our collective, please reach out to us.

Thank you,
Gordwin Odhiambo