There’s not a lot of help for homeless people in Kenya . But a Facebook project wants to make their voices heard.
This is Sham Patel. Earlier this year, he started documenting the stories of Nairobi's homeless people in a Facebook project called Homeless of Nairobi.
Patel was born and grew up in Nairobi and says he used to be "a product of the generic Kenyan middle class system." But one day he stopped to talk to a homeless man and realized his untold story challenged Patel's own impressions of the homeless. Patel was also inspired by Humans of New York, an online photography project that collects street portraits and short stories from everyday residents. Patel wants to use photos and vignettes to "break the stereotypes of the homeless ... A lot of people are skeptical of assisting the homeless, I wanted to break that barrier and go and talk to them directly."
Patel has been sharing the stories of people he meets in their own words.
"Kanjo" means local government workers in Sheng, an urban dialect of Swahili that originates in Nairobi.
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