Mary Mathenge

Mary Mathenge knows first-hand the effects of the HIV/AIDS pandemic. As the General Manager of the National Co-operative Housing Union (NACHU) of Kenya, she sees how the disease devours not only those co-operative members with the virus but also their livelihoods and scarce resources. Many are forced to use money reserved for shelter improvements to support sick family members. Since housing co-operatives depend on the physical and financial contributions of their individual members to support all members of the community, blow to one is a blow to all.

Mary has been a community worker since the age of 12. She grew up in the Rift Valley in Kenya. Seeing people’s difficulty in securing housing and witnessing children drop out of school compelled her to focus on poverty reduction. “Housing and livelihoods are my passion,” she says. She started her career as a teacher and then worked as NACHU’s Education Coordinator before becoming the General Manager in 2001.

Mary took the lead in organizing a response to the pandemic in the cooperative movement. An informal survey of NACHU’s members revealed that less than 10 per cent had seen public service announcements about HIV and AIDS. In response, NACHU trained over 350 co-operative members to provide HIV and AIDS-related education and services. As a result, more NACHU members are being tested and more people are open about their HIV status. This leads to less stigma and more prevention, contributing to the Millennium Development Goal of halting and reversing the spread of the disease by 2015.

NACHU members are doing many different things to address HIV and AIDS issues. Some co-operatives distribute food for children orphaned by HIV and AIDS. Others build shelters for those left without a home, or provide home-based care for the sick.

“Mary works at the grassroots level to motivate and inspire people, and she does the same thing at the top,” says Brad Lester of Rooftops Canada, a Toronto-based non-governmental organization that has worked with NACHU since1984.