Nairobi, Kenya
Kibera has never been short on stories. They are in the languages people speak at home, in the streets, in the way families pass things down. What it hasn't always had is a direct path from those stories to a printed children's book. That's what NABU and the Kibera Arts District built this year: the Kibera Creative Fellowship 2026.
Where It Started
The fellowship opened on 25 May 2026 with a training module for 10 local writers and illustrators. Over several weeks, they moved between in-person and online sessions covering craft basics: how to write for children, how to illustrate for the page, and what makes a story actually work for a young reader.
Photo 1: Fellows with Monica Grecu and Tony Mochama during a training session at the Kibera Art District, Nairobi
The sessions were led by NABU's Monica Grecu (Director of Creative Content), Bruno Iradukunda (Senior Illustrator), and Marbin (Illustrator), joined by journalist and author Tony Mochama. The goal wasn't to discover talent that wasn't there. It was already there. The goal was giving people the tools to turn what they already knew into something a child could hold and read.
Ten fellows went through training. Six moved into full production: three writers, three illustrators.
Stories That Belong To Kibera
The idea driving all of this is straightforward: children deserve to read stories that look and sound like their own lives.
The six fellows are now working together on three original children's storybooks, rooted in Kibera itself: its people, its culture, its daily rhythm. This is how NABU approaches local-language content generally. Not stories written about a community from the outside, but stories written by the people who actually live there.
For the fellows, this isn't just a creative skills workshop. They are becoming the authors and illustrators of stories that belong to their own community first.
From Kibera To The World
Once production wraps, the three books will be translated into five languages and published across NABU's global reading platforms. A story that started in Kibera will end up in front of children who've never been there.
The fellowship doesn't end when the books ship. Fellows who complete the program join NABU's Creative Fellow Alumni Group, an ongoing network for mentorship and creative support.
Three books is the immediate output. The bigger point is what it proves: that the people best placed to write a community's stories are the people who live in it, and that with the right support, those stories can travel well beyond where they started.
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