From Mathare to the World: How Hesbon Omondi Owino is Turning Challenges into Climate Opportunities

When the rains come to Mathare they do more than wet the ground, they reveal what generations of neglect have built: clogged drains that become rivers of refuse, makeshift homes battered by floods, and a daily lesson in how climate stress and poverty feed one another. It was in that fraught landscape that Hesbon Omondi Owino learned the two truths that would shape his life: environmental harm is social harm, and young people can be the architects of their own recovery.

Hesbon Omondi Owino

Hesbon, who grew up in the narrow lanes and cramped courtyards of Mathare, remembers waste piles and seasonal floods not as abstract crises but as the daily reality that shaped his neighborhood’s prospects. “What truly motivated me,” he says, “was seeing how these environmental challenges were deeply connected to social issues like unemployment and hopelessness among youth.” That insight, that green skills could unlock both livelihoods and dignity, became the throughline of his work.

Out of those early observations grew Life Mtaani Community, a grassroots initiative that centers vulnerable youth in Mathare through life skills, creative arts, and mentorship. But Hesbon did not stop there. Seeing the twin crises of environmental degradation and youth unemployment, he designed YIELD, Youth Innovation for Empowerment, Leadership, and Development, a youth-led sustainability hub model that treats the neighborhood as both classroom and laboratory.

YIELD is intentionally simple and radical at once: a safe, physical space run by youth, for youth, where people learn practical trades and green innovations side by side. The curriculum is a patchwork of relevance, tailoring and digital literacy sit next to upcycling, composting, and eco-soap making. Mental wellness support, peer counseling, life coaching, goes hand in hand with leadership development and community engagement. The goal is not just training but transformation: building resilient livelihoods while repairing the ecological fabric of the neighborhood.

What makes YIELD notable is its attention to the whole person. In Hesbon’s view, sustainability cannot be just about technologies or techniques; it must also be about confidence, agency, and emotional wellbeing. “By helping them build sustainable livelihoods, we’re not only reducing poverty but also protecting the environment,” he explains. That dual focus is deliberate: equipping a young person to make eco-soap is useful; equipping them to market it, manage money, and lead others creates ripple effects.

YIELD also aligns neatly with wider development goals. Hesbon points to its relevance for SDG 1 (No Poverty), SDG 4 (Quality Education), SDG 8 (Decent Work), and SDG 13 (Climate Action). But where policymakers see targets on paper, Hesbon sees a neighborhood where possibilities can be practiced. The model is in early implementation, building local partnerships, piloting trainings, and testing what scales, and Hesbon is clear-eyed about the challenges ahead: funding constraints, infrastructural barriers, and the heavy inertia of informal settlements that have long been neglected by formal systems.

Yet recognition has begun to follow impact. In 2025 Hesbon was selected as a UPG Sustainability Leader by United People Global, and named a HopeWorks Global Ambassador, honors that have amplified the Life Mtaani story and helped open doors for collaboration. More important to him than titles, he says, are the small, visible changes: a group of young people who turn plastic refuse into marketable goods, a compost pile that yields soil for a community garden, a young leader who now mentors peers instead of feeling left behind.

There is an unglamorous courage to this work. It is patient: building trust in a community where skepticism is a survival strategy; creative: converting trash into income; and humane: treating mental wellbeing as integral to sustainability. Hesbon’s long-term vision is equally practical and ambitious, to expand youth-led sustainability hubs across Africa, creating nodes where environmental impact and community development go hand in hand.

His story matters because it reframes climate action not as an elite project but as a grassroots craft: teach a person how to make an eco-soap, and you reduce pollution; teach a neighborhood how to run a hub, and you create a template for resilience. That perspective , bottom-up, skill-based, and youth-centered, is what gives YIELD its power.

Standing in Mathare today, Hesbon doesn’t just see the problems he grew up with; he sees work in progress: small workshops, a circle of young people planning a social enterprise, a mentor sitting with a trainee to map next steps. “I believe young people, especially those from underserved areas, have the power to lead local climate action and build sustainable futures,” he says. If YIELD proves anything, it is that when you pair environmental care with economic opportunity, you do more than mitigate climate risk, you restore hope.

Planet First Press will be watching as Hesbon and the youth of Life Mtaani scale their ideas. Their experiment is modest, fiercely local, and quietly revolutionary: a reminder that the answers to global problems often begin in the narrow alleys where resilience has always lived.