Akili Dada

I would use the Elevate Prize Funding to help Akili Dada establish an African Women Leaders endowment fund for the purpose of enhancing access to leadership development opportunities for girls and young women in Kenya and the continent. The fund would be used to generate sustainable income for Akili Dada to support access to personal and professional development opportunities for girls and young women that reside in predominantly rural and low-income communities, opportunities that are often out of reach for this group due to a lack of access to information and the resources that would enable them to take advantage of such opportunities. The endowment fund and proceeds therein will be used to cover the cost of accessing regional and international coaching and mentorship programs, cost of participating in emerging leadership development training such as travel and stipends, as well as developing bespoke curriculum and leadership development approaches for girls and young women and finally and most crucially funding research studies on emerging leadership development models on the continent. The fund would be housed within Akili Dada.

Hello there, my name is Joy Zawadi, a thinker, storyteller, and resource mobilizer from Nairobi, Kenya. I am a living contradiction, coming from a historically marginalized community in the coastal region of Kenya where my roots are firmly planted, and having been raised by parents who grew up in abject poverty but whose lives were transformed through access to quality education. I grew up watching my parents pay the proverbial 'black tax' and continue this legacy in supporting some extended family members to date. By sitting at the cusp of these two realities, my passion for education and leadership emerged, leading me to work in the development sector in Kenya. Today I work with Akili Dada that has served to cement my passion, mobilizing resources so that girls and young women from low-income and rural backgrounds can access education and leadership development opportunities, thus changing their life trajectories to those that afford them the freedom to make choices to live lives of their own choosing. My hope and dream is to one day establish a legacy in the format of an African Women's Giving Circle that would harness resources to address the barriers of inequality that hold individuals and communities back. A step in this direction is through the establishment of a leadership endowment fund at Akili Dada.

Akili Dada is an award-winning leadership incubator anchored by the belief that girls and young women CAN and DO LEAD. As a young women-led feminist institution headquartered in Nairobi, Kenya, we work with and for African girls and young women (AGYW) conscious of their agency and inherent capacity to create and implement solutions to their communities' challenges through two thematic areas; Education and Leadership. Our mission is to nurture transformative feminist leadership in girls and young women from underserved and underrepresented backgrounds to meet the urgent need for more African women in leadership. Through providing access to quality education and leadership development opportunities, we journey alongside adolescent girls and young women, building their capacity to lead while applying a holistic approach that encompasses financial investment, intergenerational mentorship, movement-building, advocacy, and storytelling. We ensure that girls and women: participate in critical conversations to influence positive community change; build strong support systems that will enable them to thrive. Ultimately, we are working to mobilize young women and girls and encourage them to participate in Africa's development and contribute to catalyzing and sustaining meaningful change.

What makes Akili Dada's work innovative is that we apply a girl-centered approach to educating and cultivating leadership in African girls and young women. We co-create programs that intervene at critical and potentially catalytic periods of transition: girls move from primary school to secondary school and from secondary school to university. Our work is underpinned by a three-part leadership development model designed to ignite self-discovery in girls and young women, activate their peer influence, and provide resources for them to positively influence their communities and emerge as leaders in their own right. We enable girls and young women to create a foundation upon which to chart their leadership paths, build their skills and acquire the necessary qualifications needed to access key decision-making roles and leadership spaces.

Akili Dada has over 15 years of impact as a convener African girls and young women, both virtually and physically, deliberately cultivating a pipeline of advocates and ambassadors who elevate, amplify, elaborate, build, create and shine a focus on women and young girls in Africa. Collaboratively with girls and their allies, we have 

Co-created and launched the Global Girls Bill of Rights initiative designed to ensure that girls get to experience the rights they deserved globally. The campaign created a platform that saw more than 1,000 girls ages 13-22 globally submit the rights most important to them and a global girls’ panel representing girls of diverse ages, cultures, and regions selected to finalize the Bill and present at the United Nations. 

Facilitated close to 78,000USD in seed grants to young women-led social change initiatives and enterprises over the last 15 years. Through the seed grants, we have seen these nascent stage initiative set up systems and structures that have enabled them to attract more significant support thus enabling to scale and advance towards sustainability.

Cumulatively nurtured close to 1,000 girl and young women leaders through all our longer-term programming.