Nyanya Project

Mary Martin Niepold, a grandmother herself, started the Nyanya Project after visiting Africa as a volunteer in 2007. Niepold was compelled to do something –- anything -– to help the people she met, visited and worked with. Read more on ONE.org.

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Mary Martin Niepold was recently featured on the Mom Bloggers for Social Good web site in Sitting Down With Mary Martin Niepold, the Founder of the Nyanya Project.  

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TNP Founder Mary Martin Niepold was one of 18 speakers at the first-ever TED-x Conference at Wake Forest University in North Carolina. After showing a film clip made by Agence France Presse about our preschool in the Kibera slums of Nairobi, she spoke about her personal journey in founding The Nyanya Project and the amazing power of grandmothers whose [...]

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The new year started with a gift of goats for our Rwandan grandmothers. Each of the 15 grandmothers TNP had trained last year were given two goats and tin siding to make enclosures for the goats. The grandmothers live high in the Jabana Hills about 10 miles from the Rwandan capital of Kigali. With the goats, they [...]

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The Nyanya Project is happy to enter the digital age – finally – and only because Mom Blogger Jennifer James is now helping us step into the future. Jennifer and The Nyanya Project Founder met last fall at a TNP fundraiser at Camino Bakery in downtown Winston-Salem. Jennifer had been to Kenya last summer, introduced herself and asked how [...]

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The article below is about the Duduza Doll Project that was initiated by Bett Hargrave, a longtime supporter of The Nyanya Project and member of Grace Episcopal Church in Lexington, N.C.  Bett and her two daughters came to Kenya with TNP in the summer of 2009 and volunteered at our preschool. Since their return, Grace [...]

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In Kibera, known as Africa’s largest slum, life is hard. Concrete squares, barely 12 wide, are called home, and electricity, running water and toilets don’t exist. Nearly 2 million residents jam its steep hillsides, a place where every decision centers on survival. Located in the heart of Nairobi, Kibera is where we trained our first [...]

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Through friends in America, TNP’s founder was introduced to Kenya’s Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Development this past summer.  Dr. James Nyikal is a pediatrician who was appointed Permanent Secretary in 2008 and today directs a ministry that promotes gender equality and social development for a population of nearly 40 [...]

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Eugene Nyagahene is most likely the leading entrepreneur in Rwanda.  He is founder of that country’s Tele10 Group, and his conglomerate of various businesses stretch from East Africa to Asia.  He began developing his businesses in Rwanda shortly after the Genocide in 1994, and today his offices are in his own skyscraper in the country’s [...]

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“Fish for Sex” was written by Mary Martin Niepold, Founder of The Nyanya Project, to bring attention to the alarming AIDS rate in western Kenya where the city of Kisumu and small towns border Lake Victoria. Here, the AIDS rate is around 48%, and poverty and gender bias drive much of the crisis because of [...]

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