This past Saturday, the GMin-Innovate Kenya team was invited to provide a full day introductory session on Design Thinking in Mombasa town to 37 professionals involved in the Mombasa Girls in STEM Solve IT Project. The project aims to empower girls to take a keen interest in STEM based subjects by having women professionals from Mombasa train and mentor 150 high school girls on a STEM-based curriculum. This project is led by alumni of the TechWomen Program in Kenya and their partners Pwani Teknowgalz, supported by the US State Department Alumni Engagement Innovation Fund (AEIF), a fund that supports alumni initiatives that promote shared values and innovative solutions to global challenges.
The training was carried out in Senator Hassan Omar’s office in Mombasa where we were joined by the newly appointed Cabinet Secretary, Mr.Joe Mucheru and Mr. Mahmoud Noor - Head of CSR at SEACOM (a company that provides connectivity services). The training involved introduction to Design Thinking based on the d.school and IDEO.org curriculum and we started the day off with a design challenge of stacking fruits! The challenge was an introductory test for the teams to see how they can create, collaborate and work in a limited time and resource environment. Afterwards, we moved on to introducing the steps involved in the design thinking process and the participants got to use the Empathy Toolkit and the Problem Framing Tree to get a more practical experience of the process.
Participants were also tasked with analysing the traffic problem in Mombasa and to understand between the cause and effects. Through guidance, they identified their user and came up with various solutions for how to ease traffic congestion in the coastal town which included but not limited to; encouraging use of eco friendly bikes for short distance travels, a mobile app to track and alert users about notorious ‘matatu’ (minibus) drivers and an adjustment to a 6 hour work schedule/shift that can help in minimising ‘rush hour’ traffic
Towards the end, participants were given an example of how they can make their product or service sustainable by getting it into the market and how they can use the business canvass to map out several aspects of their business. Leroy, who is a GMin youth ambassador, also shared his journey as a social innovator and how he aims to make his biogas project more sustainable while still creating impact in his school community.
The training went well! Our only wish is that we could have had more time to hack into and deconstruct more local problems that they face in their communities but we also know that this was just the beginning and we look forward to working more with TechWomen & PwaniTecknowgalz!