Whenever I read about Kibera, the native reaction is to want to directly help someone, but not anonymously through a mysterious charity organization. Is there a way to find a boy or girl like Yvonne in the article, who is unsupported, set up a means of communication, and work with them directly, one on one? There would never be any hope created of meeting them or arranging to get them out of Kibera, but to help them improve their life, mainly through their own actions. Not a monthly stipend, but, for example, get them a skill or tool in which they could support themselves, like a used sewing machine, or bicycle, and keep in contact with them to offer encouragement, raw materials, spare parts, etc.

You asked how you can help people in places like this directly: google microloans. You loan a person in a developing country the money to buy a sewing machine...or rent a storefront...or buy a cell phone that then becomes the neighborhood pay phone, or whatever entrepreneurial idea they have. They repay you when they can and you can lend to someone else. I don't think I'm allowed to recommend a specific organization on here, but a little research will make one or two rise to the top. Look for one that gives 90% or more of the money directly to the recipient, and uses 10% or less for overhead.

While working in Africa, I have seen how these programs can make a vastly greater difference than just sending money or goods. People there are smart, determined and capable--but they can't get credit without paying 15-30% interest rates, if they can get it at all.

I have also found it very empowering to go there and just get to know people. When you realize they are sentient, capable people who tell jokes and love their moms--not the victims always staring dully into the journalists' cameras. you don't feel so paralyzed or hopeless about their futures. I go as a non-profit volunteer, but with full awareness that I'm not really being that helpful in my volunteer capacity. Whatever I'm doing, someone there could be doing it, and probably better. But I support the organization financially, having seen the work it does, and also end up with a lot of friends I can then support directly in ways like this.

The article mentions that many of the people living in Kibera moved there from rural, agrarian communities motivated by false hopes of improving their lot. Why isn't there a program of education and assistance to get them to realize the mistake they have made and move back to those communities instead of staying in such a hellhole? The approach which everyone seems to be taking currently is to try to make a purse out of a sows ear, rather than pursing the obvious solution.

Leo Gaten

Sequim, WA

I have never met this young friend of mine, who just turned 15 in October. But through http://www.cfcausa.org I am his sponsor. We know each other only through letters and pictures. He signs his letters "your lovely boy" and hopes we will one day meet. His last letter to me, written November 15, said he hoped all my family was well "as we are well here in Kenya." Now things in his Nairobi slum are far from well, and I do not even know if he is still alive.

Monsieurwood's letter asks if there is a way to help individuals help themselves. This I do not know. But I do know that CFCA gives me the chance to help one person get food and education, and I am able to do this although I am not rich myself. CFCA is an A+ rated charity which unites individuals rather than collecting cash in a crisis. CFCA helps in many parts of the world and I am not familiar with all they do elsewhere, but I know that in Africa one of the first forms of assistance is a pair of shoes, to some who have never had them. Then food and education -- basics to us, but impossible for the very poor in countries unable to provide them. CFCA has an update on the crisis in Kenya on its site -- the program has been affected, but it will continue when possible.

I do think Monsieurwood has a point on the person to person assistance, whatever form that takes. It is very hard to care about an abstract, or about mind boggling numbers of displaced persons or persons dying of AIDS or in natural disasters. We are not able to solve huge problems by ourselves. We might be able to make a huge difference to just one person.

If every person just gave a little to help, we could make sweeping changes. Thank you cgreen. I am headed to that site now.

I've started loaning money on Kiva- http://www.kiva.org. Supposedly a 0.2% default rate on $3M in loans so far. All it costs me is the opportunity cost of the money I loan, which I would have otherwise kept in my no-interest checking account (we're talking ~$25/loan), so it seems like a low-cost way to help specific people out.

Because in 43 years we still haven't learned that the wages of extreme poverty is extreme violence.

The more a wealthy elite - whether in Nairobi or in Los Angeles - enriches itself at the expense of the poor, the more vulnerable it makes itself to the inevitable explosion and resulting carnage.

And the reason Beverly Hills hasn't burned to the ground is because LA - and America - hasn't seen the explosion yet.

Ruthann Richter is right to shine a light on the terrible poverty that exists in the slums. However, the awful, soul-destroying conditions under which close to a million people live in Kibera are not solely responsible for the violence that erupted in Kenya over the new year.

Armed mobs are not new to Kibera: gangs of thugs are routinely employed by politicians and by the criminal organizations which flourish in places that have no access to the rule of law. The police themselves treat Kibera as something akin to a free-fire zone with the presumption of guilt a default setting. Those with some money, power or weaponry (including established authority) terrorize, exploit and degrade those without on a heart-breakingly regular basis.

When the criminal gang known as Mungiki staged some dramatic and incredibly bloody acts of violence, in June of last year, the police responded with a series of heavy-handed raids that left scores of people dead, some at least of whom were simply innocent bystanders caught up in the sweep.

Mungiki is a useful point of reference in this discussion as well since part of the resilience of this gang rests on their usefulness to Kenyan politicians. Both KANU (the party of Daniel Arap Moi) and NARC (the opposition alliance which won the Kenyan elections of 2002) politicians made use of Mungiki over the past decade as hired muscle for the purposes of intimidating political opponents.

It should come as no surprise then that mixed in with the genuine supporters of Raila Odinga's ODM were thugs and vicious mobsters who used the occasion to settle old scores or perhaps to engage in some "creative unrest" at the behest of their paymasters. That the victims of their actions would be other poor people is an irony lost on the servants of the powerful who set these men in motion. The poor have always been expendable in the machinations of the well-to-do in Kenya.

The status quo has failed the wananchi (the ordinary people) of Kenya. It has failed to protect those who can least protect themselves, it has forced them to live in squalor, denied them access to decent food, shelter and healthcare.

If the riots are an indictment of anyone, they are an indictment of all those who live in security and wealth in a country where everyone should have a decent level of prosperity and security. Shame on Mwai Kibaki for rigging the elections, shame on Raila for allowing the mob to run loose. Shame on us all both in Kenya and in the influential West for allowing and enabling this kind of feudal, arrogant disregard for common human decency to infect so many well-educated, well-off people that they feel no discomfort in turning their backs on their fellow human beings.