Empowering Girls with iPADs

We are very excited to share a video from our 2012 collaboration with ZanaAfrica, a Kenyan non-profit founded founded by 2011 PopTech Social Innovation Fellow Megan Mukuria. ZanaAfrica empowers Kenyan girls to break cycles of poverty through simple, sustainable solutions. They are developing eco-friendly sanitary pads to provide to young women in Kenya, and they provide health education so that girls can stay in school with confidence.

The other pads involved in this project were of the digital nature. Alphachimp teamed up with Megan and the staff from ZanaAfrica to produce a video inspired by iPad artwork made by ZanaA's EmpowerNet Club girls.

EmpowerNet Clubs are groups of about 20 girls that meet after school every day to talk about issues the girls might not be getting support around at school or home, such as peer pressure, drug use, self confidence/ esteem, relationships, love, and health and disease.

ZanaAfrica provided some of these groups with iPads starting in January, and the girls began drawing the stories of their towns, homes, and lives and the impact ZanaAfrica has had on them. ZanaAfrica shared these drawings with Diane Durand, our managing director, who from Nashville created iPad Brushes artwork inspired by the girls' compelling drawings.

While visiting Kenya for PopTech's Climate Resilience Lab, Peter and his family visited an EmpowerNet Club and work with the girls to generate more artwork and to hear more about their stories.

This is exactly the kind of collaborative project Alphachimp is all about: using doodles to empower groups of people to make things happen in their lives.

We are so grateful to the young women and staff at ZanaAfrica for sharing the privilege of telling their stories through this powerful medium. Doodles do have the power to change the world!