The Africa Young Innovators for Health Award has launched its first competition this year designed to highlight and support the work of pioneering young African entrepreneurs developing health innovations. We have received entries for solutions aimed at supporting, equipping, protecting, and training healthcare workers, who are on the frontline of delivering healthcare to communities. It is for this reason that in its first edition, the Award will focus on supporting innovations that can make a real difference to healthcare workers. These innovative approaches need to leverage the complementary expertise of both the public and the private sector.
After 4 years of active planning, prototyping, and investing time and energy and resources and two years of active implementation, the NCDs 365 app and project have been nominated for the young innovators for health award. As the leader and developer of this project, this is a very special moment for me and the team that we work with as we have worked tirelessly aiming at improving NCDs care and literacy across the world. With this ambitious project we have managed to have 31 partnerships spanning 10 countries in Africa and getting our content translated into 4 languages in order to continue educating communities on what on communicable diseases are.
This nomination and now reaching the to 15 finalists is such a big thing for us and it’s a testament that if you have a crazy idea, put it into action and if you are passionate about making a difference then take up the challenge. With the NCDs 365 project we now have launched an app, we have a series of board games, we have developed and shared 365 NCDs messages over the past year and this year we will be sharing 54 animated videos for NCDs, such an ambitious project especially if you consider that there is no external funding that has come our way for this project. Anyways, the overriding message I hope to share through this nomination is this: if you are passionate about something, if you have a crazy idea, if you are committed to doing something, then do it, do it afraid, do it imperfect but just do it and trust that in some special way, the universe is seeing your contribution and it will reward you in kind in due time. But even if it does not, because this is your passion, you do it and do it and do it until the job gets done!
#ogwenoimpact
STEPHEN OGWENO 