Riziki Source

Fredrick Ouko is a social entrepreneur with a keen interest on solving problems facing persons with disabilities in Kenya and beyond. His interest is on the challenge of unemployment amongst disabled people that is often caused by numerous factors not of their own making but attributed to their disabilities.

He successfully founded a social organization dealing with issues of youth with disabilities and empowerment sixteen years ago for which he was elected to become an Ashoka fellow in 2012  and Cordes Fellow in 2017 and for his work on fighting inequalities that face disabled people, he was selected to become an Atlantic fellow in 2018.

Fredrick is now a founder of Riziki Source, a social enterprise that facilitates access to employment opportunities for persons with disabilities in Kenya with plans to scale up across Africa given the magnitude of the prevailing unemployment challenge amongst disabled people.

Riziki Source has developed a mobile application called Riziki App that helps collect information on disabled job seekers in Kenya into a searchable database that is also linked to text messaging and web to allow those seeking for job opportunities register from anywhere in the country irrespective of their technological background.

This enables us to bridge the barrier experienced by disabled people looking for jobs since most employers dont know how to deal with certain types of disabilities or information about their jobs is not packaged in a disability-accessible formats locking out millions of potential applicants from this community.

Employers also complain about their difficulty in locating qualified disabled people ready for the job-market. Our solutions thus offers disabled people an opportunity to be employed and demonstrate their capabilities at the work place, move out of poverty and lead independent lives supporting their families.

Riziki Source is working towards solving the unemployment problem facing persons with disabilities in Kenya. It is estimated that 6.6 millions Kenyans have some form of disability (WHO Disability Report 2011) while globally, we have 1.1 billion people with some form a disability. This population often suffer from neglect, lack of opportunities and discrimination in public life. This affects their access to public goods including education thus hindering their chances for competing at equal levels with peers in the job market.

80 % of disabled people are born from poor backgrounds thus making it harder to make it in life including accumulation of social capital that sometimes determines who gets what in the society that is Kenya. For Kenyans with disabilities, access to information about available job opportunities and those for advancement therefore becomes a luxury yet they have to compete equally with peers who have a heads-start. 

Transport that is not accessible, employers that do not understand what being disability inclusive means or myths that push them to the dark alleys of society fueling discrimination on grounds of disability.

Though qualified, employers dont seem to find them either; our solution of creating a database thus breaks the barriers.

Riziki Source has come up with a mobile application that collects information of disabled job seekers using three formats; a downloadable app for android phones or sending text message (Riziki to 0796430430) which prompts further questions for registration and on the web where one can fill a form , all this collects information on the type of the job being sought, type of disability, level of qualification, profession, gender, skills gap ( for training purposes) ,identification number, age and the locality of the job seeker. The applicant then uploads a CV to complete their profile.

On the web, employers who are willing to participate also register  and using the profiles created by job seekers, we are able to link them appropriately for job interviews and eventual hires.

By knowing the type of disability, we are able to prepare employers on what kinds of reasonable accommodations one would require for interviews and for performing their duties in the eventuality that they get hired, this improves employer confidence since they are able to anticipate what is coming and prepare well in advance thus not feeling embarrassed  

Our project serves persons with disabilities in Kenya and has plans to expand in other parts of Africa with time. This is a community that has been neglected for a long time and often excluded from main development activities in the society.

We reach all disabled people from different social backgrounds with an emphasis on those impacted most with poverty given their poor backgrounds. This community walks with us in discussing the solutions they would like to see take place in their environment to improve their lot- given that our founder is also a person with a disability, this gives us a good impetus and heads-start in designing solutions that correspond to the felt needs of disabled people in the community and constantly iterate with them to find the best working pathways that correspond to the needs and challenges experienced at a particular time.

Since they are our main focus, they also have opportunities to offer period feedback for improvement and suggest other strategies that can be used in servicing their needs more efficiently.

Our project falls in the first dimension because we are elevating opportunities to persons with disabilities who are often left behind, for example- a blind person not being able to read a job advert on a newspaper or a Deaf job applicant missing out on an interview because the employer didnt understand that they needed a sign language interpreter for them to have a fair chance.

Our project also touches on the third elevate dimension because we are bringing an understanding and demolishing myths around disability that those who are disabled only deserve sympathy and pity and proving their worth.

Being a person with a disability, i had a rough start in life-getting my education was equally challenging and when i thought that education was an equalizer; i was wrong because the society wasnt ready for someone with a disability especially in the employment circles. I got rejected in many job application attempts and interviews until i gave up and went out to form a social organization that would then champion for the rights of persons with disabilities in education and employment.

Knowing the challenge and having undergone it myself, i thought many disabled people are often left behind and condemned to oblivion yet there is something they can do to better themselves if given opportunity without looking at their disability as a determinant.

This is the reason i founded Riziki Source to exclusively focus on matters of employment for disabled people and bridge the divide between them and employers through the online platform and activities meant to educate and create awareness both towards employers and persons with disabilities themselves.

I am a disabled person as stated above and i have undergone these challenges as a job seeker with a disability. My passion is towards making it better for other individuals with disabilities so that they dont have to go through the same challenges i did when i was starting and with no system to support me and my peers back then.

I also know that persons with disabilities only need an opportunity and not pity or charity that society often associates them with.

I come this project first with lived experiences of being a disabled person who has undergone the challenges of looking for a job in a disability-discriminating environment and secondly, i have a training background in business management, political science, sociology and social innovation management diploma.

I founded a run a successful organization working on general issues around disability for the past 16 years. This is my second social organization which has a 360 degree focus on matters employment for persons with disabilities. This is my passion and i want to leave a legacy on matters employment and disability not only in Kenya but across the globe.

I have an innovative mind that keeps on thinking of solutions we can deploy to support individuals with disabilities but often face the resource challenge thus this gives me a unique opportunity to invest more in these ideas towards making it count for persons with disabilities.

When i was first looking for a job as a graduate disabled person,i faced rejection that could have easily thrown me into depression and away from the public into begging on the streets.

I however saw this rejection as an opportunity to make it right so that the society can understand, appreciate and value the abilities possessed by those with disabilities amongst them. 

It was the reason i did found my first organization which i exited and now Riziki Source to focus exclusively on matters employment and working to educate employers so that they can focus on the qualifications of those with disabilities and not their disabilities. 

I also saw an opportunity to educate those with disabilities not to showcase their disabilities as a reason to why they want to be hired but rather what they are offering , their competency and abilities to facilitate change of narrative.

While working on my project , we run into a resource challenge that warranted close-down but i did not go that route and decided to soldier on and operate on a boot-string budget while still offering support to disabled  even without an office until the situation turned around in 8 months.

Before i begun working on disability issues, i was working on general youth development matters in Kenya. As time went by i saw a need of having representation of issues of youth with disabilities across the board. This made me change my path and exclusively focus on matters that affected youth with disabilities key among them being education and employment. I begun raising the voice for policy consideration within the foras of youth where issues of youth with disabilities needed to be included yet missing. I went on to pioneer a formation of a disability organization that primarily focused on issues of youth with disabilities in the country that represented their voice both within the mainstream disability movement and youth development sector in the country.

From there onward, matters of youth with disabilities became of note in the overall discourse in youth development and disability sector. I was nominated to champion the same in a government-led youth policy making committee.

Now i have turned my focus on employment issues with a specific focus on persons with disabilities, i see my leadership being of essence in this sector going forward.

My work is unique because i have applied a simple technology to solve a huge challenge that has kept disabled people out of employment for years. Using technology to connect them to job opportunities is disruptive given that, we are now able to break the barrier of access to information about job opportunities and bring it closer to them.

They dont have to travel especially those who have mobility challenges or requires information in adapted formats to suit their disabilities, this can happen given the innovation.

Employers can also access an otherwise neglected pool of skilled labor that can create an impact on their balance sheets if deployed appropriately.

We are currently serving 500 people, in one year time we`ll be serving about 1,500 and in five years time we hope to be serving above 9000 people with disabilities

In the next year, we are looking forward to solidify our work in Kenya and establish branches across the country to better serve our target group efficiently. We want to see thousands of disabled people in jobs or starting their own jobs and support others who make their own crafts through their talents to sale their products and get income from these activities.

In the coming years, we want to demonstrate that what disabled people require is a facilitative environment and requisite support to make it in live, lead independent lives and be active contributors to the national economy. This will be thorough sharing the learnings realized from those we have placed in employment, supported to start their own employment or supported to earn a income from crafts activities

We are currently facing the challenge of high cost of acquisition since we are still establishing ourselves as a brand in the market, we hope with requisite technical support and financial backing, this should be over in about two years to come and we will have signed up hundreds of employers working with us to provide opportunities for our target group.

We will also need to improve our visibility ,get the right human resources to support our growth and delivery on our expectations towards the desired impact.

In solving the challenge of high cost of acquisition, we will continuously invest in marketing to solidify our brand in the market so that we are known thus reducing the cost of acquisition. We will pursue fundraising efforts to enable us hire requisite staff and expand our operations to reach  a larger number of beneficiaries thus expanding our impact too

We are currently working with Action Network for the Disabled,Adept Technologies, Stepwise, National Council for Persons with Disabilities, Cordes Foundation. Some of the organizations are a link to persons with disabilities for mobilization while others provide support in training, online jobs and financial facilitations.

We hope to finalize our business model in a year`s time though we anticipate to charge for components of our services to enable us run sustainably after some times. For example, employers will have to pay a particular fee for a successful recruitment, we will charge fees for our consultancy services in disability inclusion/trainings and support . Job seekers will also pay a small fee management fee after successfully receiving a job.

We will also sale products made by persons with disabilities as a social business and charge a margin to cover for our operation costs.

Currently , these services are offered free of charge as we improve on the offerings and introduce charges gradually in the second year.

The cost of trainings and others will also have an option of third party paying for certain groups of individuals to access free of charge

In the first phase of our development, we will fund our work through grant money and donations, the second phase will usher in selling of products and services and we will consider investment capital and other combination in the third phase of our growth.

We have so far raised funds from the following;

Cordes Foundation- grant $ 5,000

GNU Foundation- grant $ 5,000

Mastercard Foundation- grant money for a one year employment project support

We seek to raise funds over the coming years to solidify our operations and impact towards sustainability. We hope to raise about $ 1,000,000 over a period of five years

The estimated budget for 2020 is $ 250,000

The elevate prize will help me overcome the visibility barriers, knock-down our cost of acquisition and support our scale-up plans through the resources provided for by the prize

We are looking forward to partner with both local and international employers/companies/brands

we do hope to partner with a media and publicity company that can offer pro bono services in marketing our work and services

Partner with technological companies that can improve our systems and ensure safety of our data as we expand

We hope to attract appropriate funding agencies to support our various strategies towards creating employment for persons with disabilities

We hope to partner with;

Mulago Foundation

Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation

Segal Family Foundation

Fossil Foundation

Rockefeller Foundation

The above support social entrepreneurs creating change in their initiatives or technology -oriented solutions that have potential to go to scale.

They are capable of providing the required resources, networks and know-how through which my work can thrive and impact more disabled people beyond Kenya