Mandela Washington Fellowship....

I was selected to be a Mandela Washington Fellow for the year 2015.  The Mandela Washington Fellowship is the flagship program of the President’s Young African Leaders Initiative (YALI) and embodies President Obama’s commitment to invest in the future of Africa. The fellows undertake six weeks of intensive executive leadership training, networking, and skills building, followed by a Presidential Summit in Washington, D.C. Through this initiative, young African leaders gain the skills and connections they need to accelerate their own career trajectories and contribute more robustly to strengthening democratic institutions, spurring economic growth, and enhancing peace and security in Africa.

The Price of Success?

"Imagine a four burner stove. One burner represents your family, one is your friends, the third is your health and the fourth is your work. In order to be successful you have to cut off one of your burners. And in order to be really successful, you have to cut off two. How far are you willing to go for success?" -extract from Greg Mckeown's book: Essentialism, The Disciplined Pursuit of Less.

I've been meaning to write about this for awhile but the words have yet to come to me. Today they have via that quote. When Peace and I started Zimba, we never envisioned the massive amount of work it would require. We just decided to start to build a company from scratch to hopefully a great body of work. Just as we did not envision the work, we did not envision the toll that work would take on us. Last week, as I lay in bed, incapable of moving because of a fever that had racked my entire body, she texted me that she was in hospital, admitted for skyrocketing blood pressure. She's had a baby and her pressure didn't even go up as high as it went. Another dear friend of mine, building an amazing company as well has had her health ravaged for the past year, being in and out of hospital constantly. We are not halfway of the year yet and my doctor who rarely saw me a few years back is now suddenly back on my speed dial. Our health is going..gone? 

I'm afraid of what will go next. A couple of friends have already began complaining about how rarely they see me. I am trying but short of cutting myself into bits, I can't really see them. Is this the price we must pay?!

On Abortions....

"What is on my mind?" Facebook just asked. Well, I just read an article in the daily monitor. (Here) about how the government of Uganda has issued new guidelines for abortion. It is still illegal BUT you can now have access to post-abortion care. In other words, go to a shoddy doctor to carry out the procedure but run quickly to professional medical worker in a competent health facility so that your life/ uterus might be saved. See 1500 women lose their lives daily as a result of unsafe abortions. One thousand five hundred women! Let your mind ruminate on that number. Alarming, isn't it?!

This article reminds me of a time when I was pregnant, doing my daily walk to the taxi park when I was accosted by a young, pregnant and evidently highly confused young girl. She was wondering what she was going to do with her baby. My advice was inept of course, I didn't have the maturity I have now then. But now, I wonder what led her to pick me. Was it because I looked like her? Young and inexperienced. Was it because of the joy that evidently emanated from how I carried my bump in-spite of my circumstances(no wedding ring); loud and proud. I will never know. I hope to this day that she kept her baby.

And like a friend of my recently said; carry that baby like you are carrying the world's most precious diamond. Because you are. And never know who might be watching and which precious baby you just might save. That is what is on my mind.

Very preggo and very happy with self.

Elusivity....

Because I want to always remember how I felt,this minute,this instant. Always.

Go figure.

Bisous.

On flipping tables...

I found this awesome write up Amelia Greenhall and it spoke volumes for me and any woman who has worked in a male dominated industry. Yes, you can have awesome skills and passion to boot but you will still be passed over for roles simply because of your gender.

This brought me back to a time when a colleague and I had to have cultural workshop for our new management that was Asian just so they could understand that in the environment in which we were, women could actually take on traditionally male jobs. We coincidentally had both just returned from maternity leave and we sat there twiddling our thumbs for over a month just because no work was assigned to us cause we "couldn't" handle it. Apparently. It was disgusting.

Here's to more women flipping the table.

@tableflipclub

Women are leaving your tech company because you don’t deserve to keep us around.

For years, we thought it was us. That we were failures. We thought that if we just did twice as well as the pasty hoodie-wearers around us we’d move up through the ranks too. Instead you got twice as much work out of us than you did out of our male peers, and tossed us a few scraps of “women’s networks” and “Lean In Circles” instead of promotions and raises.

Fuck that, we’re done. It’s not us, it’s you.

We’ve watched mediocre men whiz by us on a glass escalator, including in the part of tech companies which include a disproportionate number of women - roles that get dismissed as "pink collar" such as marketing, HR, and QA. We’ve had our work torn down in code reviews and performance reviews, while our male peers back-pat each others’ shitty work onwards to the next production incident. When we try to play by the rules (which we do because we’ve seen what happens to women who don’t) we’re denied opportunities because we aren’t “ready” for them- and we are ALSO denied the things you say we need in order to BE ready. When we do these things without your corporate approval, we do it knowing that we may be the next woman who gets quietly fired for being too forward.

When we try to take a seat at the table like Sheryl said we should, we’re called presumptuous.

We’re under-sponsored and over-”mentored” - in scare quotes for all the times that “mentoring” has been more like “mantoring”. Our serious technical hesitations are answered as though we’re asking what git is.

Our reviews are full of words like “shrill”, “abrasive”, “hard to work with”, “not a team player”, and “difficult”. We’re encouraged to be nicer and less intimidating and more helpful. Action items and measurable metrics are nowhere to be found. We’re promoted on performance, while our male peers half-ass their way up the ladder, failing upwards on the “merit” of their “potential.”

It’s time we take our potential elsewhere.

We’re following in the footsteps of brave women who’ve flipped tables out of our way, clearing the path we’re now walking down. We’re talking. We’re organizing. We’re sharing our long memories of all the creeps who’ve hit on us and the cowards who’ve failed to promote us. We’re lawyering up. We’re incorporating and fundraising for our own companies, and angel investing in other women who are building amazing things. We’re ceasing to give any more fucks about your incompetently-run “Uber for cats” app or whatever the fuck your company does.

2015 is the year of the tableflip.

(╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻

#tableflip2015

With credit, love, and respect to Amelia Greenhall. 

On Empowering Women........

Recently, I was placed in the precarious position of having to explain to a fellow woman why I am so passionate about women’s empowerment. She believes that the playing field has been leveled and all these initiatives are in vain and unnecessary. I had to hold myself back from hitting her on the head with my laptop filled to the brim with research on why women are still a vulnerable group in 2015. 

So I’m sharing why I am passionate about women. I have always been very timid. I think I am now just growing into myself, anyone who has known me for over 10 years can attest to this. I have been lucky to have been mentored and been given opportunities to shine by people who recognized that in spite of a being skinny, shy girl, I had something important to contribute. And because of these people believing in me, I have a chance to make something out of my life and provide a great life for my daughter and I. 

Now, not so many women have a similar support system, in fact most women do not. Most women go through life doing what society says they can do, we are raised to aspire to traditionally feminine roles. Most parents I know are in a panic that their daughters are not married because this is the ideal epitome of success for a woman. Marriage is not bad, but we can be more than wives. In fact, I believe an empowered woman is a better wife. You need a life partner to help you steer this thing called life not someone who will just be dead weight on your boat and who better than a woman who can contribute to more spheres of life than housekeeping. 

So yes, the opportunities may be the same for men and women but social constructs still exist holding us back. Women lag behind men in technology adoption owing to the high costs of acquiring and maintaining new technologies, women have longer hours of work because not only are we gainfully employed but it lies with us to take care of the young. 

And for our homes, our economies and our nations to grow, women need to be part of the development conversation because women have a higher propensity to use their earnings and increased bargaining power to buy goods and services that improve family welfare. And family is where it all begins and ends. This is why I am passionate about empowerment of women.

On Zimba Women....

"I don't want to be rich in a land of poverty."

That quote has haunted me ever since I started this pursuit of happiness. How can one be happy with their status quo of wealth and satiety when surrounded with such poverty, such horrible squalor. This has often been my motivation to give, to help the needy but I always felt the urge to do more. Teach a man to fish, that type of thing. So in 2012, as I was going about my business, something happened that led to this;

Alot of ideas were given and that led to the birth of a company called Ajali. (More here )
It was meant to run an incubation program for SME's set up by women based on the TBS(The Baby Store) model. The initiative was meant to provide capacity building, technical assistance, financial support, mentoring and business guidance as well as invest in a woman-led profit venture. We were looking for high-potential, low income women to support to start their own businesses so that they can become financially self sufficient. Alas, that did not take. Between running a business, going to school, a full time job and raising a baby, there was simply no time or energy left for me to implement what we wanted. Hanifa continued making her soap, and all I could do at the time was market for her on Facebook as well as hold some of her inventory at my store.

Come 2014, I finally decided to bite the bullet and quit my Job to focus on the store (which was now strictly online) and baby raising. But being me, there was still energy left for more. So ZimbaWomen was born. This time, I was armed with more experience from running a business for more than 2 years, with co-founders who are as passionate as I am about empowering women and a lot more time on my hands. With ZimbaWomen, not only are we running an incubation program for women but we're enabling their businesses using ICT's. We have been operational for barely 6 months and the traction we've had is nothing short of amazing. We've been blessed to partner with agencies that share the same vision as we do.

The ZW ladies having an information session at our partner agency Uganda Investment Authority.

We are have signed up our first cohort of women for the year and the growth that some of them are experiencing is unbelievable. The best example of this is a cake maker who has gone from an order a week in January to having a single order every day of the week in March (Just a space of 3 months!) We are excited about the coming months. We are still drafting the final work plan for 2015 but we're pleased to say that it is coming together quite nicely.

Peace.K (Co-founder and I) taking a selfie break during work.

And Hanifa, Well, I ran into her recently. We had lost touch because I changed numbers and she didn't have any way to reach me. Sadly, her husband passed last year and she was left to fend for her 3 children alone. The good news, she's still making that wonderful soap which she is supplying to several shops in Kampala. Even better news, I am in position to finally guide her to the help she needs. We're working together so her business can be formalized so that she can have access to finance and her products properly branded, marketed as well as refine her distribution channels. 

2015 is going to be a good good year.

Bisous.

S.