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$ 1 : 16
For every $1 of value invested, One Young World Ambassadors deliver $16 of social value, based on a Social Return on Investment analysis of 42 Ambassador-led initiatives addressing the 17 Sustainable Development Goals in 2022
SDG Impact Tracker
Interested in supporting impactful initiatives led by young leaders? Search this database of over 350 projects from the One Young World Community to find out more.
WoWoman
Zarangiz founded WoWoman, a platform to empower women by offering them a space and tools for professional development, following her experience as a young businesswoman in Azerbaijan. She wanted to build a community of women entrepreneurs and empower them through greater freedom of choice and achieve financial independence.
Zarangiz attended the One Young World Summit in The Hague, 2018, as a Delegate Speaker on the education plenary session. She credits the help that she received from One Young World when preparing her speech as the highest quality support that she has received throughout her career. After the Summit, she felt the status elevation that being an Ambassador brings, which helped her scale her work even further. Zarangiz was recognised as a 30 Under 30 by Forbes magazine, and her appearance at the Summit proved to be a turning point in recognition of her work.
WoWoman has trained over 10,000 women in person and an additional 5,000 online, through more than 500 events and workshops, ranging on issues from mental health, personal development, gender equality and business thinking. The organisation has launched 40 programmes and projects since its inception, including a partnership with Facebook through which they received funding to open W-Space, a co-working space open to women in Azerbaijan. Their coding school, Tech Tech Khanim, teaches different coding languages and design while they also have an eight-week entrepreneurship programme, WoWenture. WoWoman offers its own English language classes, and a programme focused on solving social issues through design-based solutions. Zarangiz has also developed a partnership with Visa in the She’s Next programme, which aims to empower women-owned small businesses. It is currently in its second year.
“I am very grateful and happy that I had the experience of being a Delegate Speaker, because the quality of support that I got while preparing for my speech from One Young World is still on the top levels of anything I’ve gotten.”
Empowerment Collective
Empowerment Collective - Nepal
Nasreen Sheikh
OYW Funded Projects
10
SROI
Nasreen is the founder of Empowerment Collective (EC), a non-profit dedicated to raising global awareness of exploited labour, forced labour, and extreme poverty. As a survivor, Nasreen founded EC to empower women and girls in disadvantaged, vulnerable, and underserved communities by providing a safe environment, entrepreneurial skills training in fair trade industries, sexual and reproductive health, and education.
The Asahi team helped Nasreen create a strategic plan, focusing on three programmes around women and children’s empowerment. This involves breaking menstrual stigma by providing girls with necessary education and kits that help support them for four years, with 1,200 of these kits distributed as a direct result of Lead2030. Upon receiving these menstrual kits, the girls become ambassadors for EC and help spread awareness around sexual and reproductive health in their communities. The kits are made locally by women who also gain a monetary benefit. The second element of Nasreen’s work provides 300 children with educational resources.
The final aspect involves breaking the cycle of forced labour and poverty through skills training centred around sustainable indigenous crafts and entrepreneurship. These programmes provide material benefits to participants and also give them the confidence to succeed. Since 2008, EC has empowered 5,070 women. As well as scaling EC’s work on the ground, Asahi helped Nasreen develop partnerships with fair trade companies interested in supply chain transparency. Asahi’s connections have also helped Nasreen substantially raise awareness of her work and the problems she is trying to solve, resulting in millions of views online.
“The Asahi team has just been so incredible since we got selected for the Lead2030 challenge. My mentors, my supporters, they are all very connected to the work that we are doing on the ground.”
- 1,200 menstrual health and hygiene kits distributed.
Human and Hope Association (HHA)
Human and Hope Association (HHA) - Cambodia
Thai San
Ambassador-led Initiative
31
SROI
Thai San co-founded the Human and Hope Association (HHA) in Cambodia’s Siem Reap province in 2011, as a high school student, with the purpose of empowering local communities through education, vocational training, and community development. The organisation is run entirely by young local Cambodians passionate about alleviating poverty through a comprehensive approach to tackling issues affecting underprivileged households in their province. HHA’s educational programme began by offering English language lessons to the community before expanding to include Khmer, as well as pre-school classes, art, hygiene, community workshops, sewing programmes, and farming. Thai served as Managing Director of HHA until 2022, and he remains a board member.
Thai attended the One Young World Summit in Munich, 2021. Before attending the Summit, Thai received funding from One Young World via the 2020 Covid Young Leaders Fund for his pandemic education and prevention project with HHA. This programme educated 30,000 students and teachers on COVID-19 and hygiene, and gave each participant two masks and two bars of soap, produced by 45 women from the local community.
Through the work of HHA, 34 families have successfully transitioned out of poverty; 35 children have graduated from their preschool; over 600 young people have taken language courses, with 300 students receiving a scholarship and 94% of their programme’s graduates passing assessments. In addition, 117 women received vocational training through HHA’s sewing programme, with HHA distributing 88 microfinance loans to help these women establish their own sewing businesses, culminating in a 90% reduction in domestic violence suffered by participants. The organisation has also established 1,167 home and food gardens to tackle food insecurity, and provided training and resources to look after them.
“I really loved how One Young World organised the Summit and I learnt from the speakers. I was a recipient of One Young World’s 2020 Covid Young Leaders Fund, which helped me make an important contribution to preventing the spread of COVID-19 in my community as well as creating economic opportunities for them.”
R-Seat
Rez co-founded Refugees Seeking Equal Access at the Table (R-SEAT) formally in 2021, after six years of working for more meaningful inclusion of refugees in international and domestic policy-making conversations that affect them. Empower, her first initiative, has reached around 20,000 refugees, through mentoring programmes and workshops. Rez led the first ever Global Refugee Youth Consultations in 2016 and helped form the Global Youth Advisory Council to the UNHCR. She also co-founded the Centre for Asia Pacific Refugee Studies at the University of Auckland, a research centre focused on informing and developing responses to conflict and climate-induced displacement throughout the region.
Rez attended the One Young World Summit in Munich, 2021, as a One Young World Peace Ambassador and Delegate Speaker. The exposure to fellow Ambassadors and their work globally inspired her, and presented her with multiple potential opportunities for future collaboration. Rez was also invited to speak on peacebuilding and conflict resolution during the One Young World Peace Events in 2021 and 2023 respectively.
R-SEAT has been instrumental in developing mechanisms for refugee representation in four countries. These mechanisms are composed of a group of refugees that act as community representatives and liaisons with their respective national governments in the United States, Ireland, New Zealand, and Canada. The initiative is also in the process of establishing mechanisms in Colombia, Mexico, Germany, Uganda, Portugal, Switzerland, and Kenya. In addition to representing refugee communities, the members of the mechanisms advise governments and have actively facilitated changes in national policy, such as New Zealand’s refugee resettlement strategy. The US mechanism is also cooperating extensively with the US State Department on funding for organisations operating within the international refugee regime. Through R-SEAT, refugees have chaired forums in the UNHCR for the first time.
“The most valuable impact of becoming part of the One Young World Community is the exposure to what other young people are doing around the world, and the connections and ideas that come out of it. As well as the credibility that comes along with it, people trust the One Young World brand and name and what it stands for.”
Thrive Future
Jemima founded Thrive Future in 2020, as a social enterprise to promote gender equality. She was inspired to do so after witnessing the challenges faced by charities aiding victims of sexual violence, and decided to leverage corporate interest in supporting gender equality causes. Thrive Future aims to provide in-person educational training for corporate businesses to tackle a wide range of gender inequalities. The organisation’s free digital platform, Thrive+, provides additional research material on gender issues in 186 countries.
Jemima attended the One Young World Summit in Ottawa, 2016. After the Summit, she collaborated with fellow Ambassadors to establish a One Young World Working Group to End Domestic Abuse, which produced a document detailing the business case for ending domestic abuse. This was presented at the One Young World Summit in Bogota 2017, and resulted in a pilot training programme in London. Jemima also created the Thrive Network of Law Changers in partnership with One Young World, a gender equality advocacy network focused on taboo issues with 25 members around the world, including fellow Ambassadors.
Thrive Future has so far trained around 2,036 delegates through its programmes while the Thrive+ platform has 834 members and provides access to over 30 expert articles and more than 15 awareness videos. The organisation also runs the Mentoring Tree, a six month mentoring scheme to develop women's platforms in their workplaces, with 18 women currently involved. These women act as both mentors and mentees to ensure that all participants have an equally productive experience. Thrive Future has also published 186 country profiles in partnership with frontline charities.
“Before the Summit, I felt quite isolated as a young person in this space since a lot of people that I was working with were significantly older. Meeting other Ambassadors in a similar stage in life to me was pivotal in terms of building a network. It gave me the confidence to continue my work and I have collaborated a lot with One Young World. Like the Law Changers from Thrive, a lot come from the Ambassador Community.”
TRANSFORM
TRANSFORM - Kenya
Clayton Chaparadza
Business for Social Good
Clayton has been involved in TRANSFORM, a joint initiative between Unilever, the UK Government’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office and EY, since 2019, on top of his day-to-day role as a Customer Development Operations Manager for Unilever South-East Africa. Within TRANSFORM, Clayton led sanitation projects in Madagascar and Rwanda.
Clayton attended the One Young World Summit in Munich, 2021, during which he had the opportunity to discuss creating social impact with his peers from Coca Cola and Google. These conversations centred on the issues of plastic waste and pollution and were instrumental to his future work with TRANSFORM. As a direct result, he pivoted his attention from the sanitation space to focusing on plastic pollution. Clayton now leads TRANSFORM’s support for two enterprises operating in the waste management space in Kenya.
The first enterprise, Taka Taka Ni Mali, identifies and connects stakeholders in the waste management ecosystem. Through TRANSFORM, Clayton provides training, and helps waste collectors turn their operations into sustainable businesses by professionalising their systems. These collectors are also organised into Community Based Organisations to increase their bargaining power and aggregate and sell their waste in larger volumes to recyclers. With Clayton’s support, Taka Taka Ni Mali has developed a mobile application that automates the waste collection process from household to the recycler.
Some of the waste collectors Clayton has worked with have managed to scale their business significantly and become waste aggregators themselves. In total, TRANSFORM helps Taka Taka Ni Mali support over 1,600 waste collectors in Kenya through grant funding, market access, business training, sales and marketing support, and financial analytics. The initiative recently hosted the Crown Prince of Norway to raise awareness of waste management.
The second social enterprise Clayton works with, Taka Taka Solutions, is the only end-to-end waste management company in Kenya. They collect mixed waste from households which they sort and separate at their buyback centres. Since Clayton began working with them, Taka Taka Solutions has launched two new buyback centres, supported over 800 waste pickers with social benefits and capacity-building, improved their processing ability, and grown production volume of flexible plastic pellets to 150 tonnes a month.
Taka Taka Solutions is recycling flexible plastics, despite the additional complexities of recycling this form of waste, and expanding into refugee communities in Kenya to provide entrepreneurial opportunities there.
“From the Summit, I managed to collaborate with a few guys from Brazil, from different companies. I met a few colleagues from Google in the States. It gave me this understanding that I'm not the only person with an interest in sustainability and social innovation, and there is actually more out there. I've been invited to speak on several platforms because of me being a One Young World Ambassador”
Pipe Q-ida
Luis Felipe has been working as an environmental advocate in southern Colombia since 2008. Starting with a community radio programme in school, he later founded a television channel called Telecalamar to discuss environmental issues affecting the Chiribiquete National Park in Colombia. Despite being a protected area, between September 2021 and February 2022, over 2,000 hectares of the park were deforested [1]. In 2016, Pipe Q-ida emerged as a digital project within CoBosques that uses social media channels to communicate with local communities about conservation and environmental issues.
Luis Felipe attended the One Young World Summit in London, 2019, during which he was able to connect with other environmental activists in Latin America and the United States, which gave him new ideas and approaches to fight for climate justice. He has since received support from One Young World Ambassadors to develop his project’s website and has made joint calls to action with Ambassadors in the fight against climate change.
As a parallel project to Pipe Q-ida, Luis Felipe and the Cobosques team have set up seven schools in Colombia called the Guardians of Chiribiquete. Each course lasts three months, with nine sessions in total, and teaches an average of 20 children environmental education and the skills to become environmental activists in their own right. At the end of each school, 1,200 trees are planted, and through their work since 2016 the organisation has planted over 50,000 trees in 600 hectares. In addition, they have partnered up with 2,800 families in local communities to protect and conserve 21,000 hectares of the Chiribiquete National Park.
“One Young World came at a time in my life that I did not expect, but I needed that injection of motivation and it helped me see different perspectives and create connections that persist to today.”
Tabotabo Auatabu, Digital Transformation Office Kiribati
Tabotabo Auatabu, Digital Transformation Office Kiribati - Kiribati
Tabotabo Auatabu
Leadership Biographies
Tabotabo has always had a strong interest in the rights of children, women’s empowerment, and family development as a result of a difficult childhood. After studying psychology and law at university - and becoming the first counselling psychologist in Kiribati - he has played a significant role in changing the island nation's parenting culture, to better ensure women’s and children’s rights are upheld. He was instrumental in the passing of the Education Act and the Children, Young People, and Family Welfare Act, to better implement the relevant UN Conventions like CRC and CEDAW in Kiribati.
In addition to delivering training on positive parenting, Tabotabo worked with the Ministry of Education to raise awareness on child abuse amongst teachers, principals, and church leaders. As the first President of the Kiribati Schools Counselling and Wellbeing Network, he was selected as a finalist of the Commonwealth Youth Awards 2015 for his work. The following year he received a Queen’s Young Leader Award, and he successfully secured a place at the One Young World Summit in Ottawa, 2016. In a small country, being a One Young World Ambassador helped Tabotabo establish his reputation and credibility as a young leader.
In his role as the Head of the Social Welfare Division at the Ministry of Women, Youth, Sports and Social Affairs, Tabotabo implemented lessons he learned from One Young World Counsellor Mohammed Yunus at the Summit and strengthened programmes designed to train young couples on financial literacy. He led a team of 30 staff to ensure that Kiribati’s government welfare programmes were sustainable and reaching people in need, particularly children who required financial and psychosocial support.
Tabotabo served as a Senior Prosecutor in the Office of the Attorney General before moving into the newly established Digital Transformation Office. As a Chief Legal & Licensing Officer, his role focuses on establishing sound legal foundations for Kiribati’s digital development. This includes establishing best practices and evolving the legal system to ensure proper use of digital data and guaranteeing privacy rights, to accompany the government’s digitization plans. Tabotabo’s office is developing legal bills and regulations to protect people and is engaged in the national consultation process to ensure better accessibility. His legal and regulatory work will help guarantee the rights of Kiribati’s citizens as the country moves towards a digital economy.
“Attending One Young World has increased my credibility and garnered trust from others. Despite residing in a small country with a population of 120,000, the recognition received from One Young World has elevated my status as an Ambassador for young people, allowing others to have confidence in me.”
Peepul
Girish is the COO and Director-Scale Programmes with Peepul, a non-profit organisation in India, working on improving educational outcomes of students in public schools. The public school system in India is fee-free, and generally serves the most disadvantaged segments of society. However, the gaps in learning levels are particularly acute in these schools. Peepul aims to change the narrative, and help government systems deliver quality education in these schools for the poorest and most marginalised populations. The organisation’s unique approach, focused on improving student-teacher engagement as a means to improve learning, convinced Girish to join them full-time in 2019 as part of the leadership team, after collaborating with them as a strategy consultant.
Girish attended the One Young World Summit in London, 2019. At the time, he was slated to join Peepul for a year on a secondment. The Summit instilled a sense of urgency in him to go and create systemic change. He joined Peepul ten days later, but also published a manifesto at his previous company, with other One Young World Ambassadors, to encourage corporate social impact. Through One Young World, Girish has spoken at multiple events, including with Chartered Accountants Worldwide, and was nominated by One Young World for a Goalkeepers’ Changemaker Award.
Peepul is currently working with governments across two geographies in India, Delhi and Madhya Pradesh. The organisation also runs three exemplar government schools in the capital with the local Municipal Corporation, as a demonstration of excellence in the public school system. These schools work with 1,500 students. Peepul has also directly impacted over 300,000 teachers in Madhya Pradesh and 17,628 in Delhi through pedagogical training and interventions, indirectly impacting the educational outcomes of 10 million students. Peepul works extensively with school administrators and principals to ensure systemic change at all levels of the government school system, with an emphasis on improving grade-level competencies and foundational literacy and numeracy skills.
“One Young World has opened so many doors for me. Everything from hosting me in one of my first ever webinars, inviting me to their FinBiz event as a speaker and even nominating me for a Goalkeepers’ Changemaker Award, that took me to New York on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly.”
Nature and People as One
Nature and People as One - Kenya
Adrian Leitoro Lemaiyan
Ambassador-led Initiative
11
SROI
Adrian grew up in protected areas in Kenya and co-founded Nature and People as One (NAPO) to develop and facilitate a more inclusive approach to area-based conservation efforts that respects and meaningfully engages with local communities. Adrian works extensively with the indigenous Rendille and Samburu to implement conservation and restoration projects, with a focus on enhancing ecosystem restoration, human-wildlife coexistence and strengthening nature-based livelihoods.
Adrian attended the One Young World Summit in Munich, 2021, and was a recipient of One Young World’s 2020 Covid Young Leaders Fund in 2021. At the Summit, he met fellow Ambassador Bryce Mawhinney, who provided him with project support and helped him establish a partnership with the Katie Adamson Conservation Fund for the Herder Conservation Initiative. This programme employs four herders who carry out conservation monitoring and have reported over 500 sightings of endangered wildlife species, contributing to their continued protection. In addition, Adrian was named as one of the five Restoration Stewards for the Global Landscapes Forum in 2022 and nominated as an IUCN changemaker by One Young World, for which he was selected to share his work at the IUCN leadership Forum in Jeju, South Korea.
NAPO has five ongoing projects. The Mt. Marsabit Tree Nursery produced and distributed 1,500 tree seedlings in 2021 and a further 8,000 in 2022. Its pilot project, Ramat, has assisted the regeneration of 40 acres of land in isolated communities in the Ndoto Mountains. NAPO has also trained 120 community members in beekeeping through its Bee Works Africa programme, and distributed over 200 beehives to community members in Marsabit. Additionally, to enhance local governance, NaPO has facilitated discussions between 270 indigenous community members to co-create rangeland management solutions in northern Kenya.
“During one of the workshops at the Summit I met fellow Ambassador Bryce, who has collaborated with me on conservation projects and connected me to the foundation that has supported my work on the Herder Network. That was a huge outcome of the Summit for me and NAPO.”
erthos
Following her passion for sustainability and cleaner oceans, Nuha co-founded erthos in 2016 as a research project with her coursemate, Kritika. Two years later, after working on different prototypes that offered plant-based and non-toxic alternatives to plastic packaging, they decided to incorporate erthos as a green technology company and join accelerators in Canada.
erthos is a company looking to build better materials to help towards a plastic pollution free planet. After spending some time with plastic manufacturers, Nuha and her colleagues developed a clearer picture on how to present solutions that would realistically solve industry challenges to creating truly environmentally beneficial products. This unique approach aims to benefit both existing plastic and consumer industries and works by integrating natural alternatives into existing supply chains to create a circular economy. The erthos team’s products reduce Co2 emissions by 70%, energy consumption in the manufacturing process by 50%, and use 98% less water than traditional plastic manufacturing.
Their products are compostable but also compatible with current plastic technology, and have so far:
● removed over 700kg of CO2eq GHG emissions from the atmosphere
● diverted 3,500kg of plastic
● conserved over 3,400 litres of water
● reduced 1,750 KwH of energy consumption.
As erthos grows, Nuha hopes to continue scaling her work within the plastics industry and create a demand for zero-waste packaging globally. The team has already raised over $8M dollars, built an exciting pipeline of customers, and is scaling their operations in North America and APAC. By 2025, erthos’ solution has the potential to save seven million kilograms of plastic from the planet, and at commercial scale can achieve a 70% reduction in carbon emissions when compared to traditional plastics.
KRIS for Peace
Motivated by her family’s experiences in the conflict-affected southern Philippines, Arizza co-founded KRIS for Peace (KRIS) in 2008 with an aim to promote peace through education. Initially, KRIS began by building libraries and providing educational materials in vulnerable areas. Currently, the organisation’s focus is empowerment, leadership development, and capacity-building in young people to help them develop into peacebuilders. KRIS has organised and hosted the IsangBayan Peacebuilding Conference, the Extremely Together programme in partnership with the European Union and the Kofi Annan Foundation, as well as its Edulkaw programme, and provided disaster relief in typhoon-affected areas of the Philippines. Through the Extremely Together programme, Arizza and her team have held a series of training workshops and conferences designed to train peacebuilders, while Edulkaw emerged during the pandemic to provide digital devices to young people who could not afford them.
Arizza attended the One Young World Summit in Bangkok 2015 as a Delegate Speaker, and was a returning Ambassador in Ottawa 2016. As part of the One Young World Community, Arizza was connected with the Kofi Annan Foundation. She was also featured in the book “We Have a Dream: 201 Countries 201 Dreams with Sustainable Development Goals”, written by fellow Ambassador, Taichi Ichikawa.
Since 2020, KRIS has trained over 3,000 young Filipinos through Extremely Together, with an additional 600,000 indirectly reached through related online information campaigns. The IsangBayan Peacebuilding conference was attended by 81 young Filipinos, with the online content reaching another 361,000 people. Another 70 students have been supported with the provision of digital devices through Edulkaw, while KRIS has also provided vital disaster relief to 3,280 people.
“I still share my experience with One Young World, especially because I work with a lot of young leaders. I tell them that the Summit is an example of a gathering that erases boundaries and that promotes peace and empathy because you have so many stories and experiences happening at the same time. Every time I meet a young leader I tell them to apply to the Summit.”
Seeds of Fortune
Seeds of Fortune - United States
Nitiya Walker
Ambassador-led Initiative
41
SROI
Nitiya is the founder and Executive Director of Seeds of Fortune, a non-profit and EdTech platform to help young women of colour through their college applications process and scholarships, as well as provide them with financial education and career development skills. By 2036, over half of all college graduates in the United States will be people of colour, but only 8% of higher education institutions currently have equitable student representation and support programmes. Originally launched as a scholarship programme in New York City in 2014, Seeds of Fortune developed its digital platform to expand its reach.
Nitiya attended the One Young World Summit in Munich 2021, which allowed her to share the story and struggle of access to higher education for underrepresented groups in the United States. She developed strong connections, particularly with other American Ambassadors, which helped her expand the scholarship programmes Seeds of Fortune offers. Nitiya also established a partnership with Verizon, creating an internship programme for young women of colour. She received $25,000 from One Young World in partnership with the Brandtech Group as part of the Rebuilding Communities Fund, which helped fund her Fall College Prep Programming. Due to this funding, 30 high schoolers were sponsored to participate in an intensive college preparatory programme with Yale Women in Economics.
The Seeds of Fortune platform has helped over 2,500 women in the college application process, with 243 students receiving approximately $30,000,000 in scholarships and funding as a result of their work. The platform includes financial literacy advice for both students and parents, modulistic training on essay-writing, scholarships, application processes, choosing the right schools and subjects, and leadership development programmes. Seeds of Fortune has also hosted events in major US cities.
“Attending the Summit had a very tangible impact on my project, I had fellow Ambassadors join Seeds of Fortune as volunteers and I established a partnership with Verizon and the Brandtech Group.”
Eco-Soap Bank
Eco-Soap Bank is a non-profit founded by Samir Lakhani that employs economically-disadvantaged women to recycle leftover soap from factories. This recycled soap is then distributed to children and refugees, to whom Eco-Soap Bank also provides hygiene education. Eco-Soap Bank leverages waste materials and creates new bars of soap to address the critical need for hygiene in the fight against preventable disease.
Samir utilised the $50,000 funding available through Lead2030 to purchase five recycling machines that went to each of Eco-Soap Bank’s five soap factories across the world. The organisation employs 160 women and builds economic infrastructure that empowers local communities. The $50,000 Eco-Soap Bank received through Lead2030 has resulted in a threefold increase in its recycling capacity output. The organisation reached 1.6 million people, mostly children, through its soap and hygiene education in 2022 alone, while Eco-Soap Bank’s total reach since its founding stands at 8 million people. The primary recipients in 2022 were Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh and Ukrainian refugees in Poland, and more recently, the organisation has worked to support earthquake survivors in Syria and Turkey.
Eco-Soap Bank typically distributes its soap through schools accompanied by hygiene education provided by its partner organisations. In refugee settings, the soap is distributed through Eco-Soap Bank’s INGO partners to reach the most vulnerable people. In addition to the material benefits of the programme, Lead2030 provided Samir with the opportunity to familiarise himself with the vocabulary and requirements of partnering with large corporates, and how to frame value propositions to create sustainable partnerships.
“Our partnership and Lead2030 award with Reckitt has been the most important, defining, punctuating moment of our organisational history. This award has legitimised our organisation. Having $50,000 to spend towards purchasing equipment is completely out of reach for most small charities, and that's what we did.“
- 10.5 million bars of soap recycled and redistributed across the globe in 2022
Stowelink Foundation
Stephen founded the Stowelink Foundation, a non-governmental organisation that aims to inspire healthier communities in Africa through innovative community health projects focused particularly on non-communicable diseases. These types of diseases are responsible for 39% of deaths in Kenya annually. Stephen does advocacy work with the Stowelink Foundation, cooperating with the government and key health institutions to raise awareness of non-communicable diseases amongst young people and facilitate inclusive and affordable healthcare spaces.
Stephen attended the One Young World Summit in London, 2019. A year later, he started the NCD 365 project in Africa with the support of fellow One Young World Ambassadors, who helped him with networking, engaging local citizens, establishing partnerships, and expanding Stowelink Foundation’s reach in West Africa. Following in his footsteps, Kevin Oduor, their Chief Program Officer, attended the Summit in Manchester, 2022. Through his participation in other One Young World channels, Stephen was able to use the Community to broaden his reach even further.
The Stowelink Foundation’s work is divided into in-person support, which includes cardiovascular health and baseline cancer screenings for patients, as well as training for healthcare professionals, and digital healthcare innovation. This includes mobile apps, such as the NCD 365 programme, focused on various issues related to non-communicable diseases for education purposes. The Stowelink Foundation is now present in 10 countries in Africa, and has run 28 medical camps directly impacting 232,612 people and helping diagnoses. The organisation has distributed 1,360 books related to health issues and worked with 67 schools to provide health-related training and mentorship to students. The Stowelink Foundation has also worked with hospitals to re-open non-communicable disease clinics and supports in-hospital volunteering. It has produced a free-to-reuse animated video series.
“I attended the Summit in 2019, London, and launched my NCD 365 project a year later. Thanks to connecting with other Ambassadors at the Summit, I was able to expand the NCD 365 project to West Africa, getting us more partners and more engagement on the ground.”
How to use to the SDG Tracker
Search for projects by the following case study categories:
- Ambassador-led Initiatives: qualitative and quantitative analysis of the social impact of projects which are led by young leaders in the Community.
- Business for Social Good: written case studies for initiatives ran by corporate partner organisations, led by young Ambassadors/employees.
- Leadership Stories: short biographies of Ambassadors who are growing into influential leaders for social good in some of the world’s largest companies.
- Covid Young Leaders Fund: detailed case studies of grant recipients from One Young World's 2020 funding opportunity for projects tackling the COVID-19 pandemic.
- Lead2030: detailed case studies of the Lead2030 award winners and how their projects have generated impact from participating in the programme.