Back in 2006, Mary Martin Niepold spent three weeks in Nairobi, Kenya, volunteering with children orphaned by AIDS.
"Out of my mouth the whole time was, 'Who's helping their grandmothers?'" says Niepold, who teaches journalism at Wake Forest University. "I just couldn't get it out of my mind."
After all, she has two children and five grandchildren of her own. Niepold estimates that in Kenya alone, 1 million orphans are being raised by their grandmothers because their parents died of AIDS, a disease that's ravaging the continent. It was natural for Niepold, who spent more than a decade as a writer and editor at The Philadelphia Inquirer, to ask who was helping them. There was just one problem: Nobody had an answer.
Niepold went back a year later to do more research. Her conversations with government officials in Kenya proved what she feared. Nothing was being done to help grandmothers make the money needed to support orphans. "I said to myself, 'This is not right. This can't be. Hell, no!'" Niepold says.
That's when she launched The Nyanya Project ( www.nyanyaproject.org), with her own funds and contributions from friends. The North Carolina-based nonprofit provides job training so African grandmothers, known as "nyanyas" in Swahili, can better support their orphaned grandchildren.
Many grandmothers inKenya, Niepold says, are widowed, illiterate, do not receive government aid and frequently must support families of 10 or more people on just a dollar a day.
So far, Niepold and her team of volunteers have trained about 200 grandmothers in east Africa. Working in Nairobi's worst slums, they have taught business skills to help the women run more profitable vegetable stands. They have also launched a cooperative preschool staffed by the grandmothers who work part time while their youngest orphaned grandchildren attend free.
In Rwanda, The Nyanya Project has provided training on bead making. In Tanzania, it's laying the groundwork for another preschool and hopes to scale that model throughout the continent. In many cases, the women involved in these projects have seen their incomes leap from just $5 a week to $25.
Niepold's foray into African social entrepreneurship is remarkable in its own right. What makes it even more exceptional is the age at which she's doing it. A survey last year by the global nonprofit Echoing Green found that more than 70 percent of social entrepreneurs are 35 or younger. Niepold is in her late 60s.
"No wonder I feel so tired!" jokes Niepold, who travels twice a year to Africa to raise money and oversee her nonprofit's growing array of initiatives.
Winner of Purpose Prize
Last year, she was awarded a Purpose Prize, which recognizes outstanding work nationally by social entrepreneurs older than 60. The prize is awarded by Civic Ventures, a San Francisco-based think tank that engages baby boomers in solving serious social problems through its "Encore Careers" campaign.
There are 60 million people in the U.S. who are older than 55. As they reach retirement, their experience and newfound time make them prime candidates for tackling education, health care, poverty and other challenges as social entrepreneurs. Niepold is proving what's possible.
"When you have an idea that's coming from the heart and you're burning with it, just go for it," she says. "It really doesn't have to do with age."
While younger entrepreneurs are doing important work in North Carolina and beyond, she believes older ones bring different and equally valuable perspectives. It took a grandmother like Niepold, for instance, to identify and try to remedy the struggles of desperate grandmothers half a world away. Another example: Tim Will of Rutherford Countyalso earned a Purpose Prize for helping area residents launch small farms that sell their food to Charlotte restaurants.
Launching local clubs
Meanwhile, in her quest to keep her fledgling nonprofit funded, Niepold is embarking on a campaign to enlist her fellow North Carolinians. From Oct. 14 to 22, a free photography exhibit at the Wachovia Gallery at Spirit Square in Charlotte will showcase the plight of African grandmothers supported by The Nyanya Project.
She also plans to launch a Charlotte "grandmothers club" through which local women make annual pledges of financial support to her nonprofit. Niepold, who has enlisted 42 grandmothers for her first club in her hometown of Lexington, plans to start similar clubs in Greensboro and Raleigh over the next six to 12 months. She hopes the opportunity might inspire some members to take their own plunge as entrepreneurs.
"If it's something you feel like doing," she says, "it isn't work."
