The story began in 2006 when Nyla Rodgers suffered the sudden loss of her mother to cancer. As an only child raised by a single mom, it was like losing her entire family all at once. A few months later she happened to be in Kenya working for the UN and decided to look up a young man her mother had sponsored there named Benard Olando. She met Benard in Kisumu and, along with him, hundreds of women whose parents had died of AIDS whom her mom had also helped. They welcomed her in an unexpected and overwhelmingly moving celebration. Nyla describes that it was that day that her work found her ... and Mama Hope was born.