Student draws hope, inspiration from resilient Kenyans

Jane Harbottle returned from an African studies excursion with images of Kibera, Kenya, that paint a grim portrait of life in the continent's second-biggest slum. But Ms. Harbottle's documentation of Kibera's misery could help to alleviate some of it. She has raised almost $27,000 for the Vision Sisters - a community women's and youth group in Kibera - by selling her framed photographs and soliciting private donations in Vancouver. Ms. Harbottle, 23, who stumbled onto the Vision Sisters project in Kenya in 2006 as part of McGill University's Canadian Field Studies in Africa program, says her photographs and her fundraising efforts were inspired by much more than misery. "What gives me hope for the place," the soft-spoken aspiring medical student said of the Nairobi slum, "is the incredible joy and resilience of the people there - in the midst of such difficult circumstances."