Ingrid Munro, born Ingrid Mårtensson 25 March 1941 in Norrköping, Sweden, is a Swedish architect who founded and manages Jamii Bora, a microfinance organization based in Nairobi, Kenya.
Life
Munro trained as an architect and graduated at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm in 1964. From 1979 to 1984 she headed the Swedish council of building research, a government agency. The United Nations proclaimed 1987 to be the "International year of shelter for the homeless" and Munro was appointed to convince governments to enact housing reforms. After her UN job a number of African governments offered her to lead the intergovernmental organisation African Housing Foundation, which she led from 1988 till 1999. She then began her career as an advocate for the poor in Kenya, pressing for their right to housing.
Her father was a missionary and medical doctor. She herself is a Christian, and has mustered the support of churches in Sweden, although Jamii Bora equally serves the Christians and Muslims living in Kenya.
In 1999, upon Munro's retirement, she founded Jamii Bora along with 50 women beggars, loaning them twice as much as they agreed to save. Munro said she came to know the women after she and her husband, a Canadian, adopted first one boy who had lived on the street, then his two brothers, beginning in 1988. The New Yorker quotes her as saying, "It was a small seven-year-old boy who more or less adopted us....And then we later found his two brothers and adopted them. With a situation like that, like in all great love stories, in literature and in real life, you are a helpless victim, you know?"
In 2012 Ingrid Munro was featured in the documentary Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide premiering on PBS October 1 and 2. The series introduces women and girls living under very difficult circumstances and bravely fighting to challenge them. The Half the Sky PBS TV series is produced by Show of Force along with Fugitive Films.
References
External links
Ingrid Munro presents Jamii Bora at the 2006 Global Microcredit Summit in Halifax (Video) New Yorker article on Jamii Bora October 30, 2006 An Interview with Wajibu: a journal of social and religious concern, 2001