Stephanie Kimou
My achievements are the achievements of the young people I work with everyday. As a behinds the scenes advocate, I build the capacity of young leaders in franco-phone Africa and Kenya on how to best formulate their policy asks into, clear, impactful, advocacy messages for decision makers in their countries. I give technical assistance to youth led organizations on how using data in particular will bolster their messages, and also how they can effectively communicate these data driven asks to policy makers. These interactions have led to my contribution in uplifting the talents, and efforts of Africa's young advocates as they use their passion to ensure young people have complete and uninterrupted access to family planning.
My passion started in high school, during one of my summer vacation trips to Abidjan. The older I got, the more I noticed the differences between those of my family members who had access to family planning, and those who did not. From early pregnancy, dropping out of high school, HIV/AIDs, more and more of my young family members were becoming economically trapped because they did not have access to contraception.
Again, I lead by teaching, mentoring, and helping grow the capacity of young African leaders who are at the forefront of this important work: I've worked to develop advocacy tools for the young ambassadors of the Ouagadougou Partnership countries. I worked, formed, and helped finalize their advocacy messages, along with training them on how to communicate these messages for maximum impact.
I will develop an online advocacy platform for young leaders where they can access resources that will help them when they have the opportunity to speak with policy makers and decision makers in their country. This online platform will include webinars, advocacy toolkits, communications curriculums, and other digital media young advocates can use anytime, anywhere.
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