No Means No Worldwide (NMNW) was founded by Lee Sinclair, a writer/activist living in San Francisco. Here is a step by step journey in the creation of NMNW.
Step 1 – HELP THE GRANNIES!
In 2004, Lee and her husband Dr. Jake Sinclair, a pediatrician, were coordinating sponsorship programs for AIDS orphans in Kenya through two NGO’s they founded, Manasseh’s Children and Ujamaa. While visiting with female recipients of the Ujamaa micro- loan program in Korogocho slum Lee began to hear stories of rape, incest and sexual abuse. Every story seemed worse than the last. At one point, after hearing descriptions of the gang rape of grandmothers, Lee had heard enough. She decided to try to provide the women and children of Korogocho the same IMpower Safety training opportunities she had in San Francisco.
STEP 2 – DOLPHIN OF ELDORET
In October 2005, Lee contacted a rape prevention group from Eldoret Kenya and hired them to come and teach monthly safety classes in Nairobi. This team, called “Dolphin Anti-Rape AIDS Control Outreach”, taught basic Self-Defense strategies and situational skills to over 100,000 school children. It was Lee’s involvement with Dolphin that highlighted the need for an expanded, more comprehensive approach to addressing rape, AIDS and Gender-Based Violence (GBV).
Step 3- I’M WORTH DEFENDING KENYA 

In February 2007, with the help of two San Francisco Bay area Self-Defense instructors, Lee created a rape prevention organization called I’M WORTH DEFENDING. IWD Kenya was the first slum based, full time, year round Self-Defense team in the world. After a month of specialized training, the 4 men and 4 women of IWDKenya team began teaching their first classes.
In February 2009 two Self-Defense instructors from the Washington DC area, Carol Middleton and Julie Curtis visited Kenya to provide advanced SD training to the Kenya team. By May 2009 IWD had trained over 60,000 women and children in full force defense techniques.
Step 4 –NO MEANS NO WORLDWIDE
NMNW is the next phase in the quest to promote and implement sustainable global safety training programs. We proved the efficacy of using direct action IMpowerment Safety strategies large scale in the slums – but what about the rest of the world? Ms. Sinclair receives requests for safety classes from round the globe. Responding to those requests with practical, effective IMpowerment training franchises is the greater vision of NO MEANS NO WORLDWIDE.
In order to expand our reach and scale up NMNW has teamed with Ujamaa, the Sinclair’s Kenyan microloan NGO. They are now managing over 43 trainers to teach in secondary schools in all the largest slums in and around Nairobi. This Kenyan pilot program is paving the way for an expanded global outreach to rape hot spots around the world such as South Africa, Congo, Zimbabwe, Nepal, Guatemala and Mexico.
