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Honorable Justice Martha K. Koome, EGH

Chief Justice and President of the Supreme Court of Kenya

Chief Justice Martha K. Koome, EGH, assumed office on 21st May 2021 as the 15th Chief Justice of the Republic of Kenya and 3rd President of the Supreme Court of Kenya. She is the first woman to hold the office of Chief Justice since the Judiciary of Kenya was established more than a century ago.

Chief Justice Koome joined the Judiciary in 2003 as a High Court Judge where she served until 2011. In that period, she engaged in leadership and administrative roles within the High Court.

She has served as President of the Kenya Magistrates and Judges Association (KMJA) and as an official of the East Africa Magistrates and Judges Association (EAMJA).

She was involved in the formation of the East African Law Society in 1995 and served as the inaugural Treasurer. While at the East African Law Society, Chief Justice Koome participated in negotiations towards the enactment of the East African Community Treaty.

Connect with the Hon. Justice on social media:

IN THE HON. JUSTICE’S WORDSIIN THE HON. JUSTICE’S WORDS

How do you think individual, collective, and planetary wellbeing are connected?

This is an ideal that presupposes the personal, physical, mental and social wellbeing of an individual and the subsequent increased capacity to agitate and contribute to collective wellness and social justice. A just society is keener on the sustainable use and preservation of natural endowments as well as the need to preserve the same for posterity. The wellness of the individual and the safeguarding of personal rights is therefore an important building block in realizing communal health and deliberate ecological awareness. Accessible and equitable justice systems are an integral aspect healing and collective wellbeing.

What do you hope the outcomes are from the global Hearth Summit?

To expand the platform to disseminate the message of hope and individual responsibility to be the catalyst for change as well as the collective responsibility in realizing a just and more equitable social system.

LEARN MORE FROM HON. JUSTICE MARTHA KOOMELEARN MORE FROM HON. JUSTICE MARTHA KOOME

A Deep Dive Into Hearth Summit Nairobi 2024A Deep Dive Into Hearth Summit Nairobi 2024

Stories from the Hearth

Reflections From:

The Axum Team

Organizers of Hearth Summit Nairobi 2024
🌍 Nairobi, Kenya

Quick Reads

Axum hosted the first regional Hearth Summit in East Africa in Nairobi, Kenya, in July 2024.
The Summit’s four main pillars — restorative justice, intergenerational wellbeing, ecological belonging, and faith and wellbeing — guided insightful discussions on integral aspects of societal wellbeing.
The Summit embraced an embodied and uniquely Kenyan approach to wellbeing with diverse arts experiences, wellbeing practices, and celebrations of Kenyan culture throughout the event.
The main takeaways from the Summit centered around the need for driving systemic change using homegrown solutions: for Africa, by Africa!

The Axum and The Wellbeing Project teams gather after a successful first Hearth Summit in Nairobi.

In July, we partnered with The Wellbeing Project to host Hearth Summit Nairobi, the first regional Hearth Summit in East Africa.

The two-day Summit hosted over 300 changemakers from diverse cultures, backgrounds, and fields to explore the intersection of wellbeing and social change. The Summit was thoughtfully crafted to ignite engaging discussions and interactive experiences centered on pillars crucial to our societal wellbeing: restorative justice, intergenerational trauma, ecological belonging, and faith and wellbeing. Within these pillars, participants explored themes that included movements of change and community organizing, wellbeing in the workplace, wellbeing and parenting, sports and wellbeing, among others.

Beyond the breakout sessions, the Summit also offered immersive and interactive art experiences designed to allow participants to explore the concept of wellbeing. These experiences included dance, flower arrangements, and biokinesthetics. Additionally, participants engaged with immersive art such as spoken word and stage readings, musical performances, dances, paintings, tapestries, and a live caricature setup.

For its look and feel, the Summit embraced an Afrocentric aesthetic to cultivate a strong local community atmosphere within our environment. This included using furniture adorned with traditional Kenyan cloth prints and vibrant, patterned banner graphics. The team aimed to create a Summit experience that felt as anti-conference as possible. We wanted our guests to step outside the typical hotel conference room setting, immerse themselves in nature, and participate in physical activities.

Catch a glimpse of the Summit here in this short video:

The four panel sessions touched on the following The four panel sessions touched on the following

Restorative Justice

This panel was co-chaired by Edwin Macharia, Co-Founder and Managing Partner at Axum, and Chief Justice Martha Koome, a prominent legal authority with over 30 years of experience in criminal, land, and welfare issues in Kenya. The panel explored justice as a shared responsibility and lived experience, requiring empowered individuals, accessible courts, and support for the marginalized. Critical issues discussed included addressing the overrepresentation of people with disabilities in prisons, reducing stigma, and decolonizing the justice system to promote restorative justice.

Her Ladyship Chief Justice Martha Koome speaks at Hearth Summit Nairobi with Waizeh Solonka, AJAR Trust, and Felicia Mburu, Article 48.

Ecological Belonging

The panel was chaired by Wanjira Mathai, MD, Africa & Global Partnerships at the World Resource Institute (in absentia), who unfortunately could not attend the summit. Our very own Fridah Kiboori moderated it, and it explored the deep connection that individuals and communities have with their natural and built environments. The session explored the profound interdependence between humans and nature, recognizing that our wellness and identity are deeply rooted in the health of our ecosystems and spaces.

Faith and Wellbeing

This panel was moderated by Archbishop Anthony Muheria of the Archdiocese of Nyeri, one of the co-chairs. The session explored faith as a lifelong journey of questioning our formal or informal beliefs and recognizing that our collective consciousness and actions unite us. Within formal religion, the panel discussed the common challenge of reconciling it with the perception of religion as oppressive.

Archbishop Anthony Muheria of the Archdiocese of Nyeri speaks at Hearth Summit Nairobi.

Intergenerational Wellbeing

Chaired and moderated by Edwin Macharia, this panel explored how individuals, families, and communities are interconnected and shape our collective ecosystem. The session explored how traditional methods can address community trauma and bridge generational gaps by preserving cultural knowledge and fostering overall wellbeing.

Sam Mugacha, Imaginable Futures, speaks on the intergerational wellbeing panel with Julie Gichuru, Mastercard Foundation, and peace practitioner Tecla Namachanja.

These were our key takeaways based on overarching themes from the Summit:

The significance of decolonizing our political, religious, and social structures to dismantle narratives of inequality and create systems that support collective wellbeing.

The power of intentionally and collectively identifying traumas and unlearning unhealthy habits, especially from an intergenerational perspective.

The need to remove economic, social, and infrastructural barriers to wellbeing initiatives and ensure accessible and inclusive resources for all.

For Africa by Africa. Homegrown solutions work, and we have what it takes to solve Africa’s challenges.

We left the Summit feeling reinvigorated by the insightful conversations and the deep spirit of community. We’re excited to continue the dialogue around the wellbeing movement in Kenya and look forward to championing a pan-African effort to bring the movement to the rest of the continent!

EXPLORE THE REGIONAL SUMMITS FURTHEREXPLORE THE REGIONAL SUMMITS FURTHER

Dive Into Stories From Around the World

Discover the Wellbeing Movement in AfricaDiscover the Wellbeing Movement in Africa

Meet and hear stories from the changemakers championing the wellbeing movement in Africa.

Empowering Kenyans Through Justice: Chief Justice Martha Koome on Wellbeing in Kenya Empowering Kenyans Through Justice: Chief Justice Martha Koome on Wellbeing in Kenya

Stories from the Hearth

Reflections from:

Her Ladyship Chief Justice Martha Koome

Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Kenya
🌍 Nairobi, Kenya

Her Ladyship Martha K. Koome assumed office as Chief Justice and the President of the Supreme Court of Kenya on May 21, 2021.

Prior to her appointment as the 15^th Chief Justice of the Republic of Kenya, she was a Senior Judge of the Court of Appeal. During her stint as an Appellate Judge, she headed the Criminal Division of the Court and in addition, chaired Committees which developed the Court of Appeal Practice Directions in Civil and Criminal Appeals as well as the Registry Manual that standardized the registry experience at the Court.

At Hearth Summit Nairobi, the Chief Justice was chair of the pillar on restorative justice, providing deep insights on the role of formal and informal justice in societal wellbeing. She also spoke about the need to support the wellbeing of actors in the judicial system, like judges.

Read her reflections below, originally published on her blog, and watch her exclusive interview with The Star Kenya.

“I have the immense honour to co-host the Hearth Summit Nairobi, 2024 alongside Archbishop Anthony Muheria, Archbishop of Nyeri, Kenya, Wanjira Mathai, Managing Director, Africa and Global Partnerships, World Resources Institute and Edwin Macharia, Partner, Axum Kenya; The Wellbeing Project’s Advisory Board.

The Hearth Summit, hosted by local communities of changemakers, advances a hopeful vision of individual, collective and ecological wellbeing for all – catalyzing a culture of wellbeing for changemakers and in changemaking everywhere.

At this critical moment in our country and planet, wellbeing in all aspects remains core to our survival. At the Judiciary, we are focused on nurturing restorative justice which will heal the justice system by reshaping it through the lens of our innate, empowering age-old reconciliatory systems.

We are deliberately deploying green justice to ease remand and prison congestion and encouraging parliament to review our penal laws in alignment with the Constitution and post-independence state.

By investing in alternative justice systems, we acknowledge that justice is not only found in the formal court system but in homes, communities, places of worship and markets hence the need to have multiple ways of resolving disputes.

We will continue to nurture cohesion through justice and to find uplifting homegrown ways to ensure that the justice system holds safe and sacred the fabric of our society. As we protect the wellbeing of our nation, we also seek your support to nurture and protect the wellbeing of our exceptional judges, judicial officers and staff.

It is not the structure of the systems we build that guard our humanity, it is the humanness of those systems that make our lives dignified and worthy.”