DOT Kenya, Youth Leadership Advisory Board 2020-2021

Digital Opportunity Trust (DOT) Kenya is excited to announce it’s members of the 2020-2021 Youth Leadership Advisory Board!

The Youth Leadership Advisory Board (YouthLAB) – a diverse group of innovative young community leaders – will support DOT Kenya by providing strategic advice and solutions to matters affecting youth, as well as provide an opportunity for active youth participation in the designing, planning and the implementation of the DOT Kenya’s programs. 

DOT Kenya’s YouthLAB  will also play a special role during the program design phase by promoting and providing strategic direction for the program’s implementation. They will also devote their creativity, skills and time to advise, assist, support and advocate for #DOTYouth programs, at local, regional and national levels.

Meet DOT Kenya’s 2020 – 2021 YouthLAB members: 

Mercy Mangeni  

Mercy is a young professional who is passionate about pipeline development, investment analysis and management consulting and has devoted her career to helping social enterprises in Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia. She is currently a Senior Associate at Intellecap, where she supports social enterprises by preparing them for investments and provides technical assistance and business development support. 

Mercy is a former facilitator of DOT Kenya’s programs, where she was responsible for training youth and women entrepreneurs in Kenya.  She is also an alumna of the Cherie Blair Foundation for Women in Business and a fellow of IDEX Global. 

Henry Mkare 

Henry is the founder of Kickstart Kilifi – a social enterprise that uses an experiential learning model to prevent students from dropping out of school, and also equips youth in rural areas of Kilifi County with ICT, communication, entrepreneurship and life skills.

Henry is an alumnus of Kanthari International Leadership Training Institute, Young African Leadership Initiative (YALI) East Africa, and DOT Kenya’s Youth Leadership Program.

Beatrice Wambui

Beatrice is an enthusiastic young professional who is passionate about youth empowerment and livelihood development. With a strong interest in human-centered design and design thinking, she supported the design and user testing of  Empower and Serve Kenya’s Social Enterprise Development Curriculum for Girls and facilitated sessions during the 2019 MIT D-Lab Tackling Challenges to Scale Co-Design Summit.

Beatrice is a former facilitator of DOT Kenya programs and she is currently a Program Coordinator at Empower and Serve Kenya.

Benson  Mwangi 

Benson is a social enterprise and rural development specialist with over 5 years of experience in agribusiness, youth advocacy and MSMEs development. He is currently National Government Affirmative Action Fund’s Laikipia County Coordinator, where he empowers affirmative action groups through capacity building and provides financial resources. He is also the founder of Fanikisha Ndoto Youth Program.

Catherine Kamau

Catherine is the founder of Vijana Tustawi, an organization that seeks to build the capacity of youth by providing support in mental health and psychosocial well being in Kenya.

Catherine has a Masters degree in Public Administration from the University of Nairobi. She also has experience in project management, gender and development, research, and curriculum development and facilitation.

Kelvin Guma 

Kelvin is the founder of the SAIDE Community Library in Vihiga, Kenya, a grassroots community based organization focused on building the capacity of the Vihiga community members and ensuring their empowerment through skills, knowledge and awareness raising to create a more resilient society. SAIDE also provides free learning opportunities to local children and youth by working with 15 schools to provide reading hours, digital literacy programs, and community outreach.

Kelvin has worked with partners such as American Friends of Kenya(AFK), Worldreader, Population Service International Kenya , Uzima Foundation, Foundation for Sustainable Development (FSD), and many others.