LISTEN TESTIMONIALS – VINCENT

In 2019 Business Process for Impact (BPI) model (currently known as Local Innovation Scaled Through Enterprise Network (LISTEN)) was introduced to Mfangano Island. Mfangano Island lies in the eastern part of Lake Victoria, at the mouth of the Winam Gulf. This model is anchored on Human-Centered Design (HCD) which is an approach to problem-solving that focuses on understanding and meeting the needs, desires, and limitations of the people who will be using the products, services, or programs being developed, that is HCD puts the user at the Centre.

Since the inception of LISTEN we have conducted a youth led and people centered HIV/AIDS awareness campaigns targeting the adolescents and young persons (AYP) as beneficiaries, Community Leaders and Partners. In 2022 alone we reached about 3,000 AYP with HIV education and messaging on Mfangano Island and its sister islands of Takawiri, Ringiti, Rusinga and Remba.

 By providing Sexual Reproductive Health and Rights solutions, Campaigning against harmful practices with keen interest on Child marriages, fighting for inclusion of young people in governance and decision making tables in Homabay County, campaigning against Sexual Gender Based Violence especially those meted against young persons and educating the Adolescents young persons (AYP) on measures to prevent Unintended/teenage, I can confidently say we have lived to witness change.

Through our work, we have reached out to about 5,000 AYP and the larger fisher folk community on Islands (both on and off media), engaged over 100 stakeholders and we have reached out and built partnerships (with AMREF-Power to youth, Parallegals, Mfanagno Development Forum and Office of the Deputy County Commissioner- Suba Central sub County) who work around the same areas of our interest to improve the well being of the community. Largely, we have had satisfying engagements with our clients, stakeholders and partners through change of mindset even when we could not live up to expectations of some of them at the initial stages of implementation.

I am particularly excited about a year-long partnership that involved LISTEN AYP CP Mfangano, AMREF Health Africa through Power to Youth and Ekialo Kiona Radio Station. This partnership enabled the Ekialo Kiona FM to give us a biweekly radio talk show airtime (every Thursday and Saturday), a platform on which we were majorly targeting the AYP with messages on Sexual Reproductive Health and Rights, STIs, HIV/AIDS and SGBV. Although this partnership lasted throughout 2021, the lessons learnt have empowered us more to find local solutions to sustainably continue with our work.

On a personal inclination, LISTEN gave me an opportunity to serve my community through volunteering at various capacities. The over two years engagements built my experience so much so that I was able to win a MasterCard Foundation Scholarship Program at United States International University Africa to pursue Bachelor of Pharmacy since April 2022. I further won a scholarship to virtually attend International AIDS 2023 Conference (23-26, July 2023). I must admit that scholarships are highly competitive and so without a very good competitive advantage such as voluntary community service as in my case, it would be difficult to win any of them, and on this note my services to community courtesy of LISTEN played a pivotal role.

We look forward to use the knowledge and skills gained to improve the health and well being of our community.

Vincent Ochieng’ Ogolla

LISTEN AYP Champion