Usually as Reuters editor, I care about stories that deal with millions and even billions of dollars. Today, Im writing about a gift of $26.

My job takes me around the world, sometimes interviewing world leaders, sometimes seeing key financial moguls, sometimes visiting Reuters journalists as they do their jobs.

Sometimes my job transports me spiritually as well as intellectually when it takes me to extraordinary projects projects that open my eyes to the potential of this world and the amazing things that can be done with hope, with dreams, and with a few dollars.

Im writing this in Nairobi, Kenya, visiting our Africa headquarters and visiting the expert men and women who write the stories, take the pictures and produce our Africa Journal and Africa Daily television programmes.

As part of my visit, they took me to Kibera East Africas largest slum and one of the most densely packed places in the world, a place where more than 700,000 people live in the space of New Yorks Central Park. Its a place where gangland-style execution murders happen, where glue-sniffing beggars approach wild-eyed, where the stench of sewage and the sight of garbage assault you as you enter.Today, the clinic sees 200 people a day, most for free.

When I visited, mothers carrying coughing babies were lined up waiting for a visit or for medicine: its winter in Kenya now and in the altitude of Nairobi it gets bitter cold. The clinic treats large numbers of people for malaria, typhoid and the complications of HIV/AIDS.

And it all started with that gift of $26. Tabitha used that money to start selling vegetables, ploughing the profits back into a savings plan with other women, finally starting a clinic.

Bigger gifts from foundations including the Reuters Foundation — and other donors followed. The clinic is currently doing a major project with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and prevention. And it is building a new, modern building in the heart of the slum that will bring undreamed of possibilities of treatment to people who need it desperately.

Barcott, whose gift started it all, entered the U.S. Marines after graduating from the University of North Carolina and served in Iraq as an officer.

He founded and heads the charity Carolina for Kibera, a name that echoes both his ties to North Carolina and his feeling for Nairobis slum, where the charity not only supports the clinic but runs a sports programme for 5,000 children, a womens safe space, and a waste management and recycling programme that mobilizes local youth groups.

David Schlesinger is Reuters Editor-in-Chief

Photos: REUTERS/Antony Njuguna