About 8,000 miles away, in the Nairobi, Kenya, slum of East Africa, a Kiberan woman named Judy dreams of sending her 23-year-old son to college. The price is equivalent to approximately $375, but such a fee is insurmountable for the average Kiberan inhabitant who makes a little over $1 a day. Many of the residents of the densely populated region live without access to basic necessities such as clean water and electricity. However, with University alumnus Sonny Tai’s nonprofit organization, “With Love, From Kibera,” Judy’s aspirations might not be so insuperable after all.

With Love, From Kibera, was formed last May by Tai, along with University of Chicago Booth School of Business MBA students and “Carolina for Kibera,” a nongovernmental organization in Nairobi. Their mission? To link artisans in Kibera with buyers in the United States through e-commerce.

Growing up in a suburb of Johannesburg, Tai always had a passion for Africa and a desire to help those less fortunate around him.

“I witnessed a level of poverty that you don’t usually see in the U.S. or Western European countries,” he said. “You see people living in tin shacks made from tin and cardboard, you see shanty towns where they don’t have running water, and as a child, that just really left an infallible impression upon me.”

Tai knew he wanted to do something about the meager conditions that surrounded him, but he wasn’t sure what he could do to help. He enlisted in the United States Marines Corps in the hopes of being deployed to an underdeveloped country in which he could do some good. Yet, he was placed in an office in Afghanistan, and he didn’t feel that his impact would prevail in that setting. After leaving the Marines Corps in April, Tai read Rye Barcott’s novel, “It Happened On The Way To War: A Marine’s Path to Peace,” and decided to travel to Kibera.

“I didn’t want to just be the average humanitarian tourist, so I decided to raise some money for medical clinics,” Tai said.

In just over a month, he raised $4,300 for medical supplies to bring to the Tabitha Clinic, run by Carolina For Kibera, which Barcott founded. Once he arrived at the clinic, with no medical experience, Tai still didn’t see a way in which he could make a direct difference.

“I walked around slums a lot, building connections, meeting people and one of the first people I met — probably on my second day in Kibera — was a lady named Judy.”

Judy works as a janitor at the Tabitha Clinic, but in her off-time, she creates handmade jewelry pieces from little strips of magazine cutouts. Tai was fascinated by Judy’s craft and asked her to teach him how to make the original pieces. After chatting with Judy, Tai said he learned of her dream of providing higher education for her son, and shortly after, he contacted his future classmates at the University of Chicago through the Class of 2015 MBA Facebook page.

Within three days, Tai received $800 worth of pledges from people interested in purchasing more than 100 bracelets and necklaces.

The immediate interest caused him to get in contact with several of his other Chicago Booth classmates to launch With Love, From Kibera. He then reached out to other Kiberan women and youth groups, such as the Victorious Youths Group, to create a market for artisans to sell their jewelry.

Now, four months later, Tai is planning on entering With Love, From Kibera in the University of Chicago’s Social New Venture Challenge. The winner of the challenge will receive $25,000 of funding from the University of Chicago.

Currently, the biggest obstacle the organization faces is building a lasting business model through which people can purchase goods, Tai said.

“When I was in Kenya, I noticed that sending a letter back to the U.S.A. by snail mail only cost 100 shillings (or $1.25),” Tai said. “If so, With Love, From Kibera can operate a social enterprise model on the honor system. American customers would be allowed to order small quantities of goods to be shipped directly from Kenya, and pay upon receipt of the goods.”

If Tai were able to put this new system into place, it would allow producers in Kenya to sell directly to customers in the United States, and operation of the website could be passed on to Jeffrey Okoro and Moses Ojwang, Tai’s contacts in Kibera.

“What I’m trying to do is create a Western market for Kibera jewelry,” he said. “So these people could afford their rent, support their families, send their kids to school and accomplish some of the things that are a lot more difficult to accomplish on the Kibera market.”

Because of the immense poverty in Kibera, there is no market to support artisan craftwork. While foreigners pass through the region, they don’t come very often, Tai said.

One of the other founders of With Love, From Kibera, Jonathan Dold, was attracted to the project because of its low-cost solution toward aiding Kiberans directly. Dold also wanted to get involved because of Tai’s leadership skills and his enthusiasm for the project.

“On the one hand, I saw how he was an excellent steward of donation money he had received from other sources — transparent and constantly looking for the best way to make an impact,” Dold said. “He is also extremely passionate about helping people he knew personally in Kibera, and testimonials from Kiberans speak to his dedication.”

Tai sent $500 to Kibera to various women and youth groups, and gave Judy a cash advance of 8,000 Kenyan shillings before he left Kibera. He traveled back to the U.S. with 60 pounds of jewelry, but hopes the Social New Venture Challenge will allow him to build a sustainable model for his organization.

“We’re taking it one step at a time. The ultimate goal is economic empowerment,” he said. “This is just a way for us as Americans to open another door for people in Kibera to do for themselves.”

Alice can be reached at [email protected].