Giving Compass' Take:

• Australian native, Cathy Zeiger, created Boldly I Go, a charity to help displaced children in Kenya by providing them with sponsorships that teach them specialized skills to provide more stable life trajectories.

• The aim of Zeiger's charity is to provide sponsorships that can help mobilize people out of the cycle of poverty and give them a support system that will lead to sustainability.  She calls it providing a "hand-up rather than a hand-out."  Is her approach effective?

• Read about the microcredit programs for Kenyan women that are helping them become involved with real estate projects.

The heavily disputed 2007 Kenyan general elections, which saw President Mwai Kibaki thrust into the presidency, resulted in widespread political, tribal, and ethnic turmoil that ultimately saw 1,200 deaths and 300,000 internally displaced people.

In an attempt to deal with the crisis, 118 internally displaced camps were set up in locations across the country.

While the camps provide roofs over people's heads, the sheer volume of displaced people and limited resources means many remain in the camps for years with little to no sanitation, no land to farm, sanctioned food, and inadequate educational opportunities.

This is what spurred Australian woman Cathy Zeiger to launch Boldly I Go, an Australian charity with the ambitious goal of breaking the poverty cycle for children and their carers in Kenya.

The charity, founded in 2008, provides child sponsorship, income generating projects, life skills, and training programs to people in the rural towns surrounding Nyahururu — a region 200 kilometres north of Nairobi.

Six Boldly I Go sponsored children have recently graduated secondary school. Among them is Kelvin, who grew up without parents and in an environment with constant food scarcity.

In April, Zeiger launched ‘Boldly I Go Virtual Reality', an initiative that aims to bring home the hardships many children face in Kenya by changing the worldview of Australian students.

A new International Monetary Fund survey on the world’s poorest population has ranked Kenya at number eight. Out of the 50 million population, 29% are categorized as poor. The issue of internally displaced people and the sheer number of people living in Kenyan slums continues to grow.

For Zeiger, sponsorship goes a long way toward improving not only people’s capacity to buy their own homes and create sustainable income, it also has the ability to empower them to make their own choices — something poverty had long robbed them of.

Read the full article about poverty in Kenya by Madeleine Keck at Global Citizen