The people and organizations behind every screening.
The Slum Film Festival wouldn't be possible without the generous support of our donors and partner organizations. Their collaboration helps bring stories from, by, and about people living in urban slums to shared outdoor screens in Nairobi's informal settlements and beyond.
Partnerships play a quiet but vital role in the Slum Film Festival, helping to translate the vision of filming the slums into real shared experiences. Since its earliest edition, the festival has positioned collaboration as a way of widening the circle, inviting organizations that share an interest in storytelling, community engagement, and creative expression. The result is a platform that feels collectively built, with each partner contributing to a program that places cameras and screens in the hands of people whose neighborhoods are rarely centered in mainstream cinema.
Lead partners typically provide the structural backbone of the festival, supporting the logistics that allow outdoor screenings, juries, and award ceremonies to take place across informal settlements. Beyond funding, these relationships often bring mentorship, technical advice, and international reach, helping filmmakers from the slums connect with wider audiences. The festival speaks of partnership in the plural, suggesting that no single institution could carry the work alone, and that sustained cooperation is what keeps the annual celebration of slum cinema moving from one edition to the next.
Community partners anchor the festival in the neighborhoods where it screens films, opening up public spaces and mobilizing local audiences. Their involvement helps ensure that events feel less like imported cultural showcases and more like neighborhood gatherings, with residents shaping the program through discussion panels, volunteer crews, and post-screening conversations. This grassroots layer of collaboration echoes the festival's broader mission of visibility, giving filmmakers and viewers from the slums a sense of ownership over how their stories are presented and received.
Supporting partners and donors add further texture, contributing resources, equipment, and promotional reach that strengthen the festival's year-round activities. From media outlets amplifying the call for entries to visiting filmmakers offering workshops, each form of support extends the festival beyond a single week of screenings. Together, these varied collaborations reflect an understanding that storytelling from the margins thrives on shared effort, and that the Slum Film Festival is as much about building relationships as it is about showing films.
World Friends is an international NGO recognized by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In 2004 it was registered by the NGO Board in Kenya, where most of its programmes are implemented. The organization works alongside local communities in developing countries on programmes that focus on human rights, health, and education.
Partner contributions help sustain community screenings, filmmaker workshops, the annual Film Lab, and the outreach that carries the festival into the neighborhoods it serves.
Outdoor film events in informal settlements, primarily Kibera and Mathare.
Skill-building sessions held with collaborating production groups.
A development space for new projects pitched during the festival.
Public events that celebrate the year's selections and winners.
For partnership and sponsorship inquiries, please reach the team through the Contact page. Organizations interested in supporting future editions are warmly welcomed.