Friday, October 18, 2013

GCP in Africa: Kenya

Through my company's Global Citizens Program (GCP) in Microfinance, I will be spending two weeks in Kenya with two local social enterprises, both focused on nutrition within the low income communities.

The GCP allows employees to apply for skills-based international volunteering opportunities with partner organizations. I went through a rigorous interview process back in April and am proud to be 1 of approximately 10 people selected.

My main project will focus  on implementing and reviewing the management dashboard of an African honey social enterprise. Also, another opportunity came up to work with a second social enterprise that focuses on water so I took it! They are a fairly new start-up and need me to construct their client engagement process.  I have committed to working with them offsite as well, since two weeks for both projects is a bit tight.

Should be an exciting and challenging two weeks! Over the past few days, I have been reading up on both organizations and speaking with CEOs to understand the history and culture of each.

Overall, my organization is working on a fund that aims to alleviate HIV/AIDS in Africa, Asia and Latin America. At first I wondered how honey fit in, but with so much of the population with HIV/AIDs, it’s critical for the individuals to have proper nutrition for the medication to work. Honey is highly nutritious, an anti-oxidant and affordable. And obviously clean drinking water leads to a better quality of life as there are less health issues overall.

1 comment:

  1. I'm really interested to hear more about the use of honey! And to think here most of us use it as a condiment.

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