Library Journal review of Poverty and Promise Audio Book – March 15, 2010: This title’s 2008 trade paperback edition won an Independent Publisher Award and a Next Generation Indie Award and was a finalist for the Glyph Award for Best First Book by a New Publisher. In this audio edition read by the author, Brown tells of her humanitarian efforts in the area of community health with an international relief organization in Kenya. Passionate about her work but concerned for her personal safety, she ended up returning home to the United States before completing her two-year contract. Brown beautifully conveys her range of feelings throughout her stay, from surprise and delight to fear and frustration. The African-based acoustic music by Sule Greg Wilson, author of The Drummer’s Path, adds atmosphere. For travel and volunteering collections. [Includes a bonus interview with the author.—Ed.]

Publishers Weekly: Though Brown decided to return to America before finishing her two-year contract in Kenya with U.K.-based international relief organization Voluntary Services Overseas (VSO), she relishes her recent experience there in this compassionate, affecting memoir. She describes her work for the Tropical Institute of Community Health and Development (TICH), the programs they try hard to implement, and the hours she and her colleagues spend in training. Impressed with her natural surroundings, Brown endures overbearing heat and celebrates the country’s intrinsic grace (“I see more than dustiness, more than landscapes made hazy by the sun’s glare”) while wintessing the harsh living conditions, constant hunger, disease, crime and corruption plaguing its citizens; young men repeatedly try to befriend her, hoping to marry and emigrate to the United States. Though ultimately unnerved and overwhelmed, Brown conveys her story honestly and effectively, upfront about her fear and frustation, as well as the rare occasion for hope. Book proceeeds go to support programs in western Kenya.

Midwest Book Review: It takes a special type of person to volunteer — to do something for another with no compensation. Poverty and PRomise: One volunteer’s Experience of Kenya follows Cindi Brown as she speaks about her days as a volunteer in rural Kenya, where many of the luxuries taken for granted by Americans are simply unheard of. A touching story filled with little triumphs over great adversity, Poverty and Promise is highly recommnded for community library memoir and biography collections.

“An inspiring journey of the soul, and a rare insight into the lives of Kenyans. The author shares her emotional struggles dealing with overwhelming poverty; and with the cultural stereotypes and doubts that keep most of us from ever embarking on such a courageous journey.”

Julie Conover, Host and Producer, Passport to Adventure TV, www.passportoadventure.com.

“A compassionate memoir of the highs and lows of volunteering internationally. The reader is swept into the author’s love, anger, frustration, and deep connection to the poor, the sick, the brave, and the caring people of a troubled Kenya. A compelling read!”

Rita Golden Gelman, Author, Tales of a Female Nomad: Living at Large in the World, www.ritagoldengelman.com

“If you’ve ever dreamed of volunteering in a country like Kenya — a place that is at once heartbreakingly beautiful and rife with suffering — Cindi Brown’s Poverty and Promise is a great place to start. An honest portrait of the good and the bad as one woman strives to make a difference in a foreign land.”

Jillian Robinson, Author/Photographer

Change Your Life through Travel: Inspiring Tales & Tips for Richer, Fuller, More Adventurous Living, www.FootstepsAdventures.com

Review by Robert Gribbin, former U.S. Ambassador to Rwanda and author of The Aftermath of Genocide: The U.S. Role in Rwanda. )Review posted Feb. 2010 on www.friendsofkenya.org.)

This is a heartfelt memoir of Cindi Brown’s eight months as a volunteer assigned to the Tropical Institute of Community Health and Development (TICH) in Kisumu, Kenya. Kenya truly was an eye opener for Ms. Brown. In mid-life she left a comfortable regime at home and signed on with Volunteers in Service Overseas (I was not aware that the organization took non-U.K. citizens) for a two-year stint in Kenya. She was assigned as a communications, public-relations specialist to TICH, an indigenous organization that is achieving great success in bringing better health to communities in western Kenya through grassroots education and organization of health workers. Read the full review.

Review of Poverty and Promise by KenyaView website

Poverty and Promise by Cindi Brown is a truly special book. It consists of extracts from the diaries and reminiscences of Cindi Brown who, at the age of 42, went as a volunteer to Kisumu, a Kenyan town on the shores of Lake Victoria, to help with the computer systems and the website of the Tropical Institute of Community Health and Development (TICH), a university in Kisumu. She left after eight months of her two year committment, and this book appears to be a repayment of her bad feelings about not having stuck it out to the end. She left after being robbed in the street, and feeling unsafe every time she stepped out, and therefore unable to do what she had promised to do. At the start of the book, there is an introduction by TICH founder and director Dan Keseje, a Kenyan who is a doctor of both medicine and theology. I was worried that the book would be a ‘jesus will save you’ book, but religion hardly gets mentioned after this, and in any case the writer is tolerant of various faiths. Read full review.