Women Deliver on Trade, Sustainability and Innovation

Throughout my years in East Africa, I’ve become convinced that if more women were involved in solving socio-economic problems in the developing world, global communities would be faring so much better.

I see it in the backs of women stooped over in fields using crude tools, or managing rickety kiosks on the sides of road, or serving as tireless, unpaid community activists around issues like health, education and gender-based violence . I’ve seen it in boardrooms where vibrant, animated women instantly fall mute due to custom and deference. I’ve heard it in conversations with young female Kenyan college graduates who can only find unpaid internships which they feel obliged to accept-too often in the futile hope of launching a promising career. If these women were empowered to use their boundless strength, energy and creativity, there's no question it would produce stronger profits and beneficial ideas across the board.

But despite barriers,  a critical mass of young women globally are finding their voices and taking action. Increasingly, they’re choosing to not wait for someone to offer them the seat at the table they so richly deserve. In fact, one of those young women tapped me on my shoulder about 3 years ago at a Nairobi mall food court. She’d overheard me talking to a friend and guessed I was American.

Teneasha Pierson was an @PeaceCorps volunteer in Western Kenya, living in a small village while working on community-based malaria initiatives. She had been a paralegal in Washington, DC when she decided she needed to travel and make a difference in the world before settling down, which led her to the Peace Corps. Though we only socialized a handful of times while she was in Kenya, I always came away feeling that Teneasha was incredibly grounded and focused. While I might complain about Nairobi traffic or power outages, Teneasha described the great fun of playing board games with her Kenyan host family, or how the work was so fulfilling, and how even the candlelit evenings were relaxing instead of frustrating. Her beaming smile seemed to emanate from her core…she just never seemed to let challenges defeat her.

After Kenya, Teneasha also spent a year in Dakar, Senegal with the Peace Corps. And her quest for travel and meaning has opened an incredible new chapter in her life. She has launched her own online design and fashion portal called the Teespoon Boutique. Here’s information from her website: https://www.teespoonboutique.com/about/

“Teneasha Pierson, founder and creative director of Teespoon Boutique was born with an eye for fashion and a love for traveling. She has always believed in the importance of presentation and takes every opportunity to share her story through what she wears and how she adorns her life. In 2012, Teneasha joined the Peace Corps and served in Kenya for two years before extending to continue her international work with the Peace Corps’ continent wide malaria initiative in Senegal.

Having always felt most at home in local markets and rural communities, moving to Senegal was incredibly influential in Teespoon’s design roots and conception. Falling instantly in love with the bright prints and traditional African beading in Kenya, Teneasha knew she wanted to begin her global trendsetting boutique in Africa.

“I love when I can help people feel more beautiful and more confident through the items they wear.  I love hearing people’s stories, and helping them express themselves through fashion.”  - Tee

The website launch was exciting enough when I learned about it a few months ago. But this past weekend, I saw a Facebook post announcing that Teneasha and another young woman, Rahama Wright (@rhamatuwright) will be traveling to Nigeria and Rwanda with US Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker and the Doing Business in Africa team to discuss trade engagement with Africa. They will meet with Nigeria's Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, Rwandan President Paul Kagame, and private sector leaders including Nigeria's entrepreneurial giant Tony Elumelu.

Had I known that totally Zen young Peace Corps volunteer would so quickly morph into a global economic dynamo, I would have tried to sign on as her PR director. But my point is that Teneasha possessed all the tools she needed to go from Western Kenya to the U.S. Commerce Department within 3 years. She had the passion, drive and belief in her vision. She had the brains and determination. International travel unlocked any remaining barriers and now she is modeling boldness and entrepreneurial savvy for young women in America, Africa and beyond.

I felt the same way about a young woman I began following on Twitter a few years ago. As I was trying to expand my training and consulting horizons beyond the narrow focus of health, I began to notice the tweets of one @estherclimate, a young Nigerian woman named Esther Agbarakwe. At the time, my relationship with Twitter was ambivalent at best, but I noticed that Esther always offered up-to-date news and research items, and shared relevant insights in her own confident voice.

Well, Esther’s passion for informing and capacity-building around the urgent issue of climate change is gaining her a much broader audience. As her Twitter page notes, she is “Working for the people and the planet” alongside Nigeria’s Minister of Environment Amina Mohammed (@AminaJMohamned). She was at COP 15, COP17 and Rio+20, leading youth representation to participate in the conversations about the impact of global warming on Africa. And she was also vocal and outspoken about African climate change issues during the recent COP21 conference in Paris.

That’s why I was thrilled to learn more about Esther’s work as a sustainable development advocate in a feature profile on the “This Is Africa”(@thisisafrica) thisisafricaonline.com  website. She began her advocacy at age 10, working on children’s rights issues in her home community, Calabar, Cross River State. As a teenager, she worked on reproductive issues and HIV/AIDS as it affects young people, taking her campaigns to secondary schools in the state.

You can read more about Esther Agbarakwe here: https://thisisafrica.me/lifestyle/how-esther-agbimate-change-2/ and I’m guessing you’ll be just as impressed as I am. I believe she’s a future Nigerian Minister of Environment----or President.

Here’s my final nudge from the Universe about the role of women in sustainability and economic progress. When the link to a profile on About.Me (@aboutdotme) popped up on my Twitter feed recently, I was hooked by the title, “How One Industrial Designer Revolutionizes Community Health.”  The feature was about a young woman from Atlanta, Georgia named Jasmine Burton (@jasminekburton). As an 18-year-old Georgia Tech freshman in 2011, Jasmine learned that many young women drop out of school worldwide because they have no access to toilets or proper sanitation She told her mother at the time, “I know what I’m supposed to do. I am supposed to design toilets.” From that day until now, during her tenure as a Global Health Fellow in Zambia, Jasmine has used her dynamism, energy, innovation and vision to help launch a mini WASH (Water, Sanitation and Hygiene) revolution.

It would take too long too list Jasmine’s incredible array of accomplishments since her freshman year, so I’ll just name a few: she helped design a toilet for the Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya as a part of an interdisciplinary senior design capstone at Georgia Tech, which led to the birth of the SafiChoo toilet, an inexpensive mobile toilet intended to reduce oral-fecal contamination and the spread of WASH related diseases https://www.safichoo.com/

You simply MUST watch Jasmine Burton’s @TED Talk about her work: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4pzFVspHIYQ and then check out the @WishforWASH project https://www.wishforwash.com/about.html

I’m inspired. I’m energized. These young women are teaching me and the world that when you don’t involve EVERYBODY in finding solutions to urgent development problems, you might just be lowering your chances for a more prosperous, sustainable future.