Honourees 2019
Qabale Duba Foundation
The founder and CEO of Qabale Duba Foundation formed in the year 2014. Qabale champions against harmful cultural practices like Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) and early marriages in the pastoralist communities. This is to advocate for the rights of the girl child, ensuring that cultural barriers do not hinder them from achieving their dreams.The local community-based organization seeks to empower the pastoralist girls and women through education in Marsabit county. The literacy program under the foundation has seen 25 women enroll in the adult education and about 60 children getting educated at Torbi Pioneer Academy. QDF has spearhead mentorship and career talks in the rural village schools, through the PAPA (pads and panties) project by donating sanitary towels and undergarments to the school girls. Since its inception so far PAPA project has kept more than 3000 girls in various schools in Marsabit County
Aberdare Bloom.
Sheila Wambui Wachania is a passionate agriculturalist, sales person, writer and marketer with a great concern for farmers and post-harvest losses.
Her passion created an initiative called Aberdare Bloom which ensures that farmers have minimal losses on post-harvest. Her initiative ensures that all products that cannot be exported due to standards and cosmetic issues – can be regraded- packed and placed on our super market chains to ensure that farmers suffer minimal losses. Her initiative also creates jobs especially for small scale farmers-women and youth thus being a benefit to the greater community.She looks forward to the time that farmers can receive total benefit for their produce thus improving their lives. [spoiler title=’Read More’ collapse_link=’no’]In that time there will be more jobs opportunities and the women and youth will be more empowered.
She believes that the farmer should be priority and the most important member of our society. If agriculture is well nurtured it will be truly our backbone as a country and it will be the most successful agenda of the bid 4 agenda.
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Daawah Counselling Centre.
Co-founder of Daawah Counselling Centre located in South C looking to prolong its services even further that was prompted by the realization that the Muslim community does not recognize depression and anxiety are part of mental health. The aim of the initiative is to make Muslim women understand that apart from the spiritual aspect, there is need for professional counselling. Amisa is a mentor and counsellor and works with Kibera Girls soccer academy offering mental health mentorship.
During holidays Muslim girls training on self-awareness and the importance of psychological health that has impacted over 250 girls so far. Additionally, Daawah is looking getting a space other than the mosque to conduct the mentoring sessions that can accommodate all religions.
Afriwomen Connect & Entrepreneur
Jackie Malomba is a positive change maker, seasoned banker, entrepreneur and a gender consultant with a strong financial knowledge in the emerging Women Markets across Africa, and East Africa in particular. She has been involved with identifying and establishing strategic partnerships between women entrepreneurs and various for profit and non-profit organizations.
She is the Founder and Principal Partner Afriwomen Connect and Entrepreneur. Afriwomen Connect Consultancy was built with the vision of becoming the premier partner for professional women and entrepreneurs seeking high impact results.
TakaTaka ni Mali Initiative.
Mary is a social entrepreneur at heart in the field of manufacturing industries, whose focus is to support MSMEs. She is currently the proprietor and Managing Director of Line Plast Packaging Industries Limited that does packaging solutions. Mary is the patron for Taka Taka ni mali initiative that indulges people at the dumpsites by training them on how to sort and separate the waste and later connect them to the market to sell them. Mary is passionate about skills development & creation of decent jobs for Kenyans while contributing to the industrial growth of Kenya.
Waiting Wombs Trust.
Editah Hadassa is a Business Development, Marketing and Customer service enthusiast with broad education and work experience in the three lines. She is the founder and executive director of Waiting wombs Trust, an initiative that envisions at creating awareness, supporting and bringing together families who have walked the child waiting period.Having been married and childless for over 11 years, she quit her well-paying job at Toyota Kenya and went into a life of selflessness and service to the highly stigmatized childless women and couples together. Due to the painful endometriosis condition that has really frustrated her, she is also very passionate on matters reproductive health and uses every available opportunity to create awareness and educate the society on the matter. [spoiler title=’Read More’ collapse_link=’no’]Waiting Wombs Trust has managed to bring together 30 childless couples to discuss matters infertility and how to overcome stigmatization.Editah foresees a world where waiting and childless women and couples are empowered, encouraged and supported rather than stigmatized, shunned and crushed. She is the voice of the many hurting hearts that cannot find support wherever they are. [/spoiler]
Terazo New Media
Nonsizi Agnes is the Co-founder, CEO of Terazo New Media and the Lead Publicist as well as a TV presenter. Nonsizi has had a successful year running music PR campaigns for a host of Kenyan artistes and events including King Kaka’s Eastlando Royalty, The Nairobi Film Festival, The Tinga Tinga Musical, Atemi’s song Romantic among others.
Terazo New Media is an Award-Winning Entertainment PR Agency based in Nairobi, Kenya. The agency specializes in music public relations, event planning and promotion, and several other buzz-building services for musicians, labels, recording studios, festivals, events, lifestyle and corporate brands. Terazo New Media has helped a number of artists and musicians put their careers in order professionally.
Academy of Korogocho (ACAKORO).
Academy of Korogocho (ACAKORO) football academy. The initiative deals with football acting as a bridge for both girls and boys and situated in Kariobangi North.
Out of research most academies within Nairobi consist of basically boys so the organization decided to include girls in order to engage them in order to curb early pregnancies, drug abuse and idling in general. ACAKORO has 150 children on board, who are mentored academically just besides sports.
ACAKORO in future is focuses on growing global and benefiting the children to join international football teams and mentoring them to greater in their careers.
Butterfly Techies.
JANET SILANTOI:Janet is a keen and highly driven Information Technology enthusiast with a focused interest in cybersecurity incident handling and forensics. She is a certified Information Security Incident Handler (EC-CIH), currently working under the ICT Authority as an assistant ICT Officer. She is a 2017 Tech Women Fellow and 2018 Mandela Washington Fellow for Young African Leaders (YALI). Janet has a passion for giving back to the society through her Community Based Organization-Butterfly Techies based in Samburu County. The organization aims at creating awareness about technology besides the area being a marginalized community. Her believe is; the only way to give them edge is by being tech savvy.[spoiler title=’Read More’ collapse_link=’no’]She is a mentor to high school girls in marginalized communities, and serves to give them inspiration and reinforcement to pursue STEM courses. Her ultimate goal is to pursue a master’s degree in Cyber Security and start a consulting Cybersecurity firm to bridge the missing skills gap in the Kenyan and African market.[/spoiler]
Money-Wise with Rina Hicks.
Rina Hicks is a Corporate Finance Analyst and the Operations Director at Faida Investment Bank, a finance coach, prolific writer and the author of the book Money-Wise: Create, Grow and Preserve Wealth (2016) Integrity Publishers, U.S.A. The bank is a market leader in Kenya securities and capital markets, achieving consistent, unassailable top performance in secondary trading at the Nairobi Securities Exchange. Its goal is to link investors to opportunities that will lead to wealth creation. Money-Wise with Rina Hicks is a platform t that aims to equip Africans with the basic tools and knowledge that will help them live financially successful and impactful lives.
Kenya Youths in Trade & Business.
Linda is passionate towards business and entrepreneurship, youth and women empowerment, humanitarian work, foreign relations, diplomacy, children, people living with disability empowerment, women in leadership and lastly Linda is a pan African who empowers youth, women and persons with disabilities to export more by taking advantage of trade agreements that Kenya is part of. She is the founder-Abraham Lincoln Youth Initiative and CEO-Kyle’s pure organics which manufactures homemade pure and organic peanut butter and also supplies organic honey, purple tea, oolong tea, moringa and rozella detox teas and natural shea body butter and shea lip products.Linda Chepkwony is the founder of Kenya Youths in Trade and Business which empowers the youth, women and people with disability with know-how on exports. The initiative was started to help more so the youth in matters unemployment to help create self-employment and linking buyers to their counterparts to export their products. The initiative also seeks to see Kenyans in business being more of exporters than importers of various products.
Mafanikio Community Based Organization.
DIANA MUNANAIRI
I am a firm believer of education and development, the key tools that promote poverty reduction and reinstate human dignity. With vast experience on education development, rural education development and rural women empowerment, community development, mentorship of local & international students, I am open to offer voluntary services on education matters, mentorships and social programme development.
Diana is the Programme Director at Mafanikio Community Based Organization a platform where education is given priority to spearhead development in rural and marginalized areas through community development and cross-cultural activities.[spoiler title=’Read More’ collapse_link=’no’] The organization was started in 2003 that has managed to sponsor different schools with the school feeding programs and sponsoring 250 students through high school education from needy backgrounds.[/spoiler]
Powerspot Pelletizers Kenya
Mary Kibui is a mechanical engineer graduate, passionate about the welfare of women in the world. Having been in the male dominated field she beat all odds to ensure that she helps a woman who by the society culture is not able to achieve their dreams. Mary has been working as a mentor to young girls in STEM. Her desire is to ensure they manage to impact many lives out here which is possible by educating a woman and offering them a chance to contribute in the growth of the economy at large.Recently Mary thought of a way to transform the lives of mothers in the rural areas and also help in protect the environment. In collaboration with Powerspot Pelletizers Kenya, they are able to produce renewable energy for cooking as well power production mostly to the people not connected to the national grid. [spoiler title=’Read More’ collapse_link=’no’]The jiko program is a long-term investment to ensure that every household has power and is able to use renewable energy sources to protect our environment from pollution.Powerspot Pelletizers Kenya is located in Kakamega County and deals with the production of pellets that help to produce clean energy that is converted to power while cooking. Due to the ban of charcoal in Kenya, so was the initiative founded being able to capture over 100 distributors. .[/spoiler]
Creatives Garage
Liz is a driven and slightly eccentric creative, who has achieved more for the creative industry in East Africa in a short while than others have in a lifetime. Creatives Garage is a multi-disciplinary collective space for Creatives to network, share ideas, collaborate, learn, gain market accessibility and push boundaries. Best known as the Chief Mechanic and founder of Creatives Garage in conjunction with creativity and innovation Sondeka Festival, the goal is to create a thriving ecosystem that impacts investing opportunities to deliver financial and social double bottom line returns, by working closely with visual artists, performing artists and tech innovators who are social change agents in the society.
Lizs’ end goal is for all creatives to network, share ideas, collaborate, learn, gain market accessibility and push boundaries in order to contrive a sustainable creative economy that feeds into the GDP of Africa rather than one that saps from it.
Silver Lining Kenya.
BENAZIR MOHAMMED:
Founder and director of a Community Based Organization called Silver lining Kenya, based in Garissa County, North Eastern Region. She believes that with opportunities, platforms and support given to the young women, they can help in solving most of the problems in their communities. Indeed, her activities are felt at the grass root level and she believes it is upon the young people to change their societies positively.Through her initiative Benazir has highly advocated for the rights of young girls especially on education and ending different forms of gender-based violence. [spoiler title=’Read More’ collapse_link=’no’]The organization has been in operation for more than three years in Garissa empowering and transforming the lives of young girls who are often neglected by the society. The initiative has been able to impact more than 1000 young girls directly and indirectly in the region giving support and guidance to them through FGM as well as creating awareness in the community on its harmful effects. Through this organization, she has been a great role model to younger girls. Benazir is a Royal common wealth associate, She Xperience fellow and a Young Women’s Mediation Ambassador.[/spoiler]