Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
The Schmooze

Jessica Posner Wins Top Prize at VH1’s Do Something Awards

On Friday, 23-year-old Jessica Posner was in Kibera, Africa’s largest slum. Three days later she was in Los Angeles’ Hollywood Palladium, sitting amongst gliterrati like Snoop Dogg, chatting with host Jane Lynch and – ultimately – accepting a $100,000 Do Something Award on VH1 for her work in starting a school for girls and a community center in Kenya.

“It was pretty surreal to go from being in Kibera to being in Hollywood,” Posner told the Forward, just before her flight back to Kenya, scheduled for just two days after the awards ceremony. “The award just makes me want to work so much harder,” she said.

The Do Something Awards recognize people under 25 who are making an impact through what Shmooze readers might call tikkun olam.

Posner was nominated along with 14 other finalists in May and ultimately won for Shining Hope for Communities, an organization she co-founded with Kennedy Odede. Posner, a Jewish Denver-native, and Odede, who grew up in Kibera, have already opened The Kibera School for Girls (the slum’s first and only free school for girls) and the adjacent Shining Hope Community Center, which offers classes, a library, internet access and sanitary public toilets. The prize money will help the pair get started on a new clean water initiative and expand the school to serve more students.

“It’s sad and horrifying that people have to live the way they do,” said Posner, pointing to statistics – 66 percent of Kibera girls routinely trade sex for food – that only begin to illustrate the dire situation. “But it’s also amazing how people are able to cope with really difficult circumstances.”

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse..

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.