Rita Obama
*Rita Obama's birth is celebrated on this date in 1960. She is a Black Kenyan-British community activist, sociologist, journalist, and author.
Rita Auma Obama is from Nairobi, Kenya, and is the daughter of Barack Obama Sr. and his first wife, Kezia Obama (née Aoko). She is Barack Obama's older half-sister. After attending a local elementary school and The Kenya High School for secondary education (1973–1978), she secured a scholarship to attend university in Germany. She studied German at Heidelberg University from 1981 until 1987. She also studied at the German Film and Television Academy in Berlin.
Obama's final project at the Film Academy was the twenty-minute film All That Glitters (1993), depicting the vulnerability of Black lives in post-unification. She went to the University of Bayreuth, graduating with a Doctor of Philosophy degree in 1996. In 1996, Obama married a white Englishman, Ian Manners, and had one daughter born in 1997. Obama and Manners divorced in 2000. Obama lived in the United Kingdom after her studies. While there, she helped her mother, Kezia, to relocate from Kenya to the UK. In 2007, Obama and her daughter relocated to Kenya.
Obama worked for five years in Kenya with CARE International before starting her charity, Sauti Kuu Foundation. She is also the initiator of the Sauti Kuu Act Now Awards. 2010, the Jacobs Foundation's board of trustees appointed her as a new member. This foundation provides funding and support worldwide and has an annual budget of approximately CHF 35 million ($ 33.66 million in 2010) for projects benefiting young people and their social integration. In 2011, she was interviewed for the documentary Building Hope and was the subject of the German film The Education of Auma Obama.
In 2017, Obama was honored with the fourth International TÜV Rheinland Global Compact Award in Cologne. At the award ceremony, she received a specially made bronze sculpture, Der Griff nach den Sternen (Reaching for the Stars), by artist Hannes Helmke. Obama is the author of the book, And Then Life Happens, released in 2012. She is a member of the World Future Council, the board of trustees of the Germany Reading Foundation, and the advisory board of the Bayreuth Academy of Advanced African Studies at the University of Bayreuth. She serves on the council of the Kilimanjaro Initiative in Nairobi.
Since 2014, Dr. Obama has patronized the International Storymoja Festivals in Kenya. In 2021, she appeared on the German dance show Let's Dance and reached 5th place. Obama is the executive chairwoman of Sauti Kuu Foundation (Strong Voices Foundation), a non-profit organization in Kenya.
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