When and Where: January 13th, 13:00-14:00 EAT (East African Time) 11:00-12:30 CET (Central European Time), Zoom
Organizer: Lightup Impact, Afrikala Art and Werbinti
Thank you everyone for making our first public event a success! The event gathered over 50 participants to learn about the Lightup Impact community’s work and the art of pitching. The recording is available to watch below.
The objective of the event is to showcase the work of Lightup Impact member organizations in gender, health and development in Eastern Africa, and foster networking among and beyond the Lightup Impact network.
We welcome anyone interested in gender and development in Eastern Africa to get to know our community.
Stay tuned for details on event program. If you have any questions, reach out to contactus@lightupimpact.com.
11:00-11:05 Welcome words
11:05-11:15 Introduction of founders and guests
11:15-12:00 Pitching session of three organizations: Activate Action, Goblis Foundation, CHADALA
12:00-12:05 Break
12:05-12:20 Networking session in break-out rooms
12:20-12:30 Presentation of Lightup Impact and how to join the community
Isaac Waithaka is the founder of Goblis Foundation, which transforms marginalized and vulnerable young people into social entrepreneurs using a cost-effective and efficient process through community volunteers.
"We unbridle and nurture social entrepreneurship drive within each of the social entrepreneurs. Through personalized empowerment stages, we create original projects or improve the existing ones to help social entrepreneurs to engage in sustainable projects through self-management processes to define their own path through social innovation. Mentorship and training are conducted both online through our online learning management system and offline, through mentors. Goblis Foundation takes the innovation through various iteration cycles until a social business model is validated and traction is gained. In this way, we enable our beneficiaries to turn community social challenges into opportunities that ultimately help them to make a sustainable living which in turn improves their lives, that of their family and community. By investing in the right people, we help break the cycle of poverty and help bring long-term stability to underserved communities. Our goal is to impart social entrepreneurship skills to 200,000 young people and establish 20,000 micro-social enterprises by the year 2030."
Grace Akumu is the founder of CHADALA - a registered LBQ women led organization that seeks to help improve the health and livelihoods of 10 young LBQ Women and 10 Teenage mothers aged 18-25 years in the rural areas of Nyanza Kenya, through the facilitation of Arts, Social Activities, Advocacy and Networking.
"We passionately exist to champion and advocate for the rights of LBQ Women who continue to face violence, stigma and discrimination from loved ones and the society at large. We are currently based in Kisumu County but we are looking at stretching our wings to Siaya County in Nyanza-Kenya by March 2022. Our desire as an organization is to give back to the community by supporting our young sisters, the “Teen Mums” who just like LBQ women face a lot of stigma and discrimination. This we intend to do through ‘Food-Dignity Kits Donation and Income Generating Activities (IGA)’ like Liquid Soap Making, face mask making, poultry keeping, basketry and weaving with the products sold both locally and internationally with the help of our already established networks, this will also be a form of self employment and self dependence for the vulnerable young women. We are currently self-sponsored and our dream and joy would be to find a donor this year who would support us in opening a resource center which will also act as a safe house for our vulnerable beneficiaries who face violence, stigma and discrimination. The resource center will have a book club for learning and character development skills, creative arts club for advocacy and income generating activities, wellness and dance club for mental health. As an organization that uses art as a tool for advocacy we will use different forms of creative arts i.e. dance, skits, poetry, drama, spoken Word and drawing to amplify and communicate our messages of equality and inclusion.
Rogers Omollo is the founder of Activate Action - a youth-led community-based organization working with young people living with HIV and disabilities.
"We engage them through mentorship, capacity building on HIV management, mental health, life skills, and advocacy with the aim of eliminating the stigma associated with HIV and disability, which is currently blocking them for accessing important services including health, education, and employment. The organization started in 2017 as a youth-friendly center with the aim of ending the stigma faced by young people living with HIV and disabilities by increasing access to sexual reproductive health and rights (SRHR) information and services.
Marlene is a social entrepreneur who has worked in the Humanitarian and Development world. She has notable achievement of successful projects in different counties all over Kenya. She is an artistic creative who likes to tell stories and has been involved in project/program and communication departments since 2015. She is an M&E practitioner, photographer, videographer and founder of Afrikala Art, a company that helps individuals, businesses and organisations in communications, social, PR, Marketing and content creation. She plays a key role in the company as a lead consultant and content producer.
Dr Judith Getugi-Kerini is a pharmacist by profession who works with Syspharma, a digital health company based in Nairobi Kenya, as their operations officer.
She is also the founder of WeRBinti a mentorship group for women in healthcare, dealing with career planning, career development and empowering women in c-suite roles in healthcare. Judith firmly believes the best way to make change in the healthcare industry is to equip new graduates and new managers with the right tools and skills for them to better their productivity.
Dr Getugi is a highly driven, highly motivated, multilingual pharmacist with 15 years’ experience in the African market. She believes that access and affordability are the main foci of change to revolutionize healthcare in Africa.
In this regard she works to ensure all cadres of health as well as the patients have access to what they need. Be it information, medicines, healthcare personnel. She is also involved in education for young girls in Africa towards STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics).
Her areas of expertise include digital health tools adoption, hospital and satellite pharmacy management, regulatory aspects of digital health, planning, project management, staff on-boarding, training, quality management system, manufacturing and distribution practices. She is skilled in people management, project administration, strategic management, sales and marketing, budgeting for healthcare, workload analysis metrics among other skills.
Catrina Poor is a professional public speaking coach, working with clients ranging from tech start-ups and social entrepreneurs, to ambassadors and Shakespearean actors. With tools drawn from her 10 years experience as a professional opera singer and actor, she helps her clients to hone their presentation skills and deliver a message that is clear, potent and memorable. Her techniques allow you to capture and hold an audience’s attention; to use the power of your own voice to inspire an audience to action. With her as your coach, your voice will become your greatest asset.
Megan White wa Mukuria is a recognized leader in the field of menstrual health, with 20 years’ experience in non-profit and for-profit leadership in Kenya. She successfully built ZanaAfrica from ideation into a recognized leader internationally, creating holistic impact in menstrual heath management through policy, product innovation, sales, rights-based health education, and social and behavior change communication that benefits over 40,000 monthly. ZanaAfrica’s proven intervention, developed from over a decade of listening to girls, changes gender norms and reproductive health knowledge for adolescents in just 18 months and is being scaled up with Teacher Service Commission with a shared goal to be included in the new curriculum, with plans for multi-country expansion. Megan has participated in several global firsts: entrenching sanitary pads into Kenya’s budgets for schoolgirls (2008); formulating the first Menstrual Hygiene Policy (2013-2020); creating a mobile app to coordinate pad distribution in schools (2013); developing intellectual property of non-wood pulps on commercial pad machines; and, creating a “Fast Moving Educational Good” to leverage fast moving consumer goods (FMCGs) into a mechanism for consumer education while expanding access to primary healthcare services. Megan and her work have been featured in over 40 global news stories and at over 20 conferences in the last four years. She participated in the Social Entrepreneurship Accelerator at Duke (2015-2016) and Innovations in Healthcare (2015-2018), amongst others, and is an Ashoka Fellow (2014). Megan was the youngest President of a Rotary Club in Kenya and is a founding Board Member and past President of the Harvard Club of Kenya. She holds a B.A from Harvard where she studied Cognitive Neuroscience.
Hilke Rosskamp is a Senior Manager in the Making More Health Community Activation Team of Boehringer Ingelheim, a leading German pharmaceutical company. Making More Health is a global initiative supporting communities in Sub-Sahara Africa and India attain a higher quality of life across the dimensions of health, economic development, infrastructure, education and culture. In her role, Hilke drives the development and implementation of innovative solutions in collaboration with the MMH communities. Hilke has more than 20 years of experience inside the pharmaceutical industry, with a strong focus on digital health. She holds a degree in linguistics from the University of Applied Sciences in Cologne.
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We are a dynamic and international team all driven by passion and determination to support the growth and development of our founders, and the lives of women and girls in East Africa. We care, we share and we learn together while being focused on achieving our goals as a team.
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We increase the visibility and impact of social organizations with a focus on women’s health and gender equality in Kenya. We support the growth of our founders through tailored mentoring and networking opportunities
