Meaningful Making: Eco-Innovations in Africa

Global Minimum (GMin) kicked off the year with an Educator Training in Mombasa, where we trained 37 professionals involved in the Mombasa Girls in STEM Solve IT Project. The project aims to empower girls to take a keen interest in STEM based subjects by having women professionals from Mombasa train and mentor 150 high school girls on a STEM-based curriculum. This project is led by alumni of the TechWomen Program in Kenya and their partners Pwani Teknowgalz, supported by the US State Department Alumni Engagement Innovation Fund (AEIF), a fund that supports alumni initiatives that promote shared values and innovative solutions to global challenges. 

The training involved introduction to Design Thinking based on the d.school and IDEO.org curriculum. We kicked off with a design challenge of stacking fruits. The challenge was an introductory test for the teams to see how they can create, collaborate and work in a limited time and limited resource environment. Afterwards, we moved on to introducing the steps involved in the design thinking process and the participants got to use the Empathy Toolkit and the Problem Framing Tree to get a more practical experience of the process.

The participants were also tasked with analysing the traffic problem in Mombasa and to understand between the cause and effects. Through guidance, the participants identified their user and came up with various solutions for how to ease traffic congestion in the coastal town which included, but not limited to: encouraging the use of eco friendly bikes for short distance travels, a mobile app to track and alert users about notorious ‘matatu’ (minibus) drivers and an adjustment to a 6 hour work schedule that can help in minimising ‘rush hour’ traffic.

Towards the end of the training, the participants were given an example of how they can make their product or service sustainable by getting it into the market and how they can use the business canvass to map out several aspects of their business. Leroy Mwasaru, who is a GMin's Youth Ambassador, also shared his journey as a social innovator and how he aims to make his human-waste biogas project more sustainable while still creating impact in his school community.  

In March, GMin together with our partner, 92Y, hosted a Satellite Event in Nairobi as part of the 7 Days of Genius Festival. 20 youth gathered to discuss how past and present geniuses show a deep connection and bond to what they do and in turn become masters in their field and push the boundaries to become geniuses. We looked at examples from people like Charles Darwin, Mozart, and discussed their affiliation to their fields. We also looked at what is considered Genius in our present time and the youth noted that a lot of breakthroughs were happening in the hardware and software tech space.