There is a certain kind of strength you only learn when you have to trek home in the rain with empty pockets and a full heart, and Sharon Lianguluti knows that strength intimately. She is a daughter of Ematsuli Village, tucked deep into the stoic, lush greenery of North East Bunyore Ward in Emuhaya Subcounty, Vihiga County. But her journey back to this soil was not a straight line. It was a winding, muddy, hopeful road that began long before her university days, in the quiet seed of childhood mentorship. She still remembers how her father added her to a group that supported girls with self-awareness sessions and sanitary towels. That small act planted something deep inside her. By the time she reached Form Four, the organization needed more mentors, and Sharon qualified. Even then, barely a teenager, she was learning that community development is not a career you choose late in life—it is a call you answer early, often before you fully understand its weight.
After secondary school, she pursued formal training, graduating in Social Services and Community Development. Her first real test came in the sprawling, resilient slums of Nairobi. She worked as a community health volunteer in places like Kangemi, Kawangware, and Langata, where some of her responsibilities included conducting community outreach and health education programs, mobilizing residents to participate in health initiatives, and identifying vulnerable households—children, elderly, struggling families—to ensure they received support. She also interned with multiple programs, including Feed the Children, walking those narrow, muddy alleys day after day. Listening to mothers, vendors, and young children, she learned a truth no textbook could teach: real change does not fall from above. It grows from within. If you enable a community to craft its own solutions, she realized, they will never beg for answers again.
Yet, for all the energy of the city, something kept pulling her back to the quiet of home. One year ago, she made the brave and complicated decision to leave Nairobi behind and settle once more into the stoic greenery of Ematsuli. But returning was not a retreat into comfort. It was the beginning of her real education. Sheila is what you might call a relative hustler, and she runs an enterprise at Esibuye Market. But unlike the polished success stories that flood social media, her mornings often began with the brutal arithmetic of survival. There were long stretches when she could not afford bus fare, and so she would simply walk—trekking the entire journey to the market and back on foot, the red Vihiga dust clinging to her shoes. She gigglishly recalls the days when the rains would come, those heavy, determined equatorial downpours that do not just wet the ground but drain your hope entirely. On those especially hard evenings, she would transform into a creative hawker, selling groundnuts, ice, and sweets by the roadside just to raise the evening fare home. There is no shame in that, she says with a laugh that carries equal parts pain and pride. That is just the price of staying in the game.
But here is what makes Sharon different. Even while fighting for her own footing, she kept looking around. She saw the young people of Ematsuli—bright, bored, and dangerously idle, with no real activities to occupy their hands or their minds. Waiting for a government job that might never arrive. Waiting for someone else to save them. Waiting, simply, to be noticed. So Sharon stopped waiting. She began walking again, but this time door to door, up and down the village paths, knocking and calling out to her peers. Come on, she told them. Let us stop complaining. Let us do something together. That is how the Ematsuli Youth Empowerment Group was born. Not in a boardroom, not with a grant, but with sheer, stubborn, foot-sore determination.
The results, though small, are astonishingly real. With the help of the local administration, Sheila has helped establish several micro-enterprises for youth who previously had nothing meaningful to do—tiny, sustainable hustles that now put food on tables and purpose in hearts. She has also personally motivated over twenty young people to register for artisanal courses at a local vocational training center, learning trades like welding, tailoring, and carpentry. None of this happened overnight. It happened one conversation at a time, one reluctant yes after another. Looking back, she realizes that her love for community development never started in Nairobi. It started in a small room, years ago, with her father’s quiet wisdom and a group of girls learning to believe in themselves. Everything since then—the slums, the treks, the rainy evenings selling ice—has simply been practice for this moment. Her work is a true reflection of what grassroots youth leadership can achieve: not flashy, not famous, but profoundly effective. She is not trying to save the whole world. She is simply impacting one person at a time, and in doing so, she is quietly transforming Ematsuli from a village of waiting youths into a village of makers, hustlers, and dreamers who walk their own roads—rain or shine.
About Author: Kevin Makova is the Founder of Forezava.
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