Emerging Leaders

1.  Elevate and stretch my own leadership muscle. By expanding my capacity we grow our capacity and I’m hungry we do both! The opportunity the Elevate Prize provides me for mentorship, engaging with other organisations & learning from people outside my sphere of influence is rare, and the single most significant factor for me applying. 

2.  Elevate our reach & impact. We have a stunning programme that has directly impacted 70,000 people in poverty, but we want to get our programme into the hearts and minds of 700,000 and then 7,000,000 and see their lives transformed. We're right in the middle of shaping our plan to scale and the Elevate Prize will help us accelerate the implement of the plan through creating visibility, providing exposure and through the wisdom of others who have walked this journey giving us access to invaluable experience.

3. Elevate our incredible team, a number who are beneficiaries themselves, by creating opportunities to intentionally grow and develop their skills. With so much of our funding project based there is limited capacity for investment in them.  Expertise and support for myself and the team in areas where we can strengthen will help magnify our capacity and impact.

ME:

Two core ingredients make up my purpose and fuel my passion:

• Unlocking human potential - helping people thrive
• Challenging and changing the injustices and inequalities for those in poverty to bring dignity, purpose and hope to their lives

MY ORGANISATION:

Emerging Leaders combines both of the above! No plaques on buildings, no easy handouts, just a profoundly simply way of liberating the potential of people in poverty and making them the heroes. We’re a dynamic training organisation focusing on mindset change and transferable life-leadership skills because these are not 'soft' skills, but essential and we see it as the missing ingredient. 

We’re a small, lean organisation punching above our weight bringing real transformation and creating a ripple effect beyond. With 5 years as Head of Training behind me, I've brought the richness of that insight into my role as CEO and used it to help us become more adaptable, focused, sustainable and ready to scale, but I’d love some help!

MY GOALS: 

• Implement our plan to scale: 70,000 to 7,000,000 people leading themselves out of poverty
• Bring the best leadership principles into multiple grassroots communities
• Every organisation tackling poverty to incorporate our programme as 'the thing before the thing'

The problem:

In sub-Saharan Africa, whilst the percentage of people in poverty is reducing (54% to 41%), a population explosion means actual numbers are increasing (278 to 413 million). An estimated 30 million more will be pushed into poverty by COVID19, with a high percentage under the age of 35. In Kenya alone 70% of the population are under 35 with 60% of 15-24 year olds unemployed. Vulnerable and unemployed youth living in slum areas live in survival mode. They “hustle” for bits of money, often waiting for an enigmatic “them” to lift them out of poverty. Bored and frustrated, they often turn to crime and alcoholism. Many are paralysed by intergenerational hopelessness and without mindset change the story stays the same.

Emerging Leaders 

Emerging Leaders is a training organisation focusing on empowering people in poverty to re-imagine and re-write the story by unlocking their potential through equipping them with the mindset, motivations and skills to navigate an ever changing world and flourish.  We provide them with transferable life leadership skills, financial literacy & entrepreneurship skills as a path to build self-worth, take responsibility for their story, start their own businesses or project and end poverty. They lead the transformation.

Many organisations seek to alleviate poverty through providing hard skills training with limited levels of sustainable success. Not because people can’t change, far from it, but because the daily pressures and stresses of poverty take up so much mental energy it reduces cognitive function and means they don’t have the bandwidth to devote to key tasks. 

Emerging Leaders takes an innovative approach by focusing first on mindset change to reduce interference and increase bandwidth. Our fundamental belief is that everyone has the capacity to lead at some level in their own lives. We help disrupt old ways of thinking using a dynamic and creative approach that engages people regardless of literacy levels and unlocks the potential that’s been dormant and waiting to grow. 

Taster of one of the principles we teach

We seek to collaborate with organisations who provide hard skills necessary to build on this foundation, because mindset change isn’t the only thing. But our data shows as 'the thing before the thing' our work acts as a catalyst that accelerates and magnifies the impact of anything else that follows by creating the ideal environment for learning, innovation and growth. In essence, we help make other programmes more effective.

Emerging Leaders is impacting humanity by empowering those in poverty to be the agents of change and lead themselves out.

HOW?

Developing an effective Train the Trainer model

• More people in vulnerable communities are reached and lives transformed
• Programme facilitated in local language & context
• Principles remain alive and active in a community even after the project

Capturing robust data to measure impact

Enabling us to evaluate the effectiveness of what we are doing and refine as needed, and share it’s effectiveness with others

• 60-75% of participants set up social or income generating projects
• 45-78% increase in income 
• 90-300% increase in savings
• Ripple effect creates an indirect impact on an average of 10 people for every person trained

Building partnerships and collaborations

Moving from one-off projects to longer term 2 - 3 year partnerships and through these developing collaborations with a wider network of organisations. 

Developing a plan to scale to impact more lives

Our stunning programme has impacted over 70,000 people directly, but we need to scale our impact. We are actively shaping our plan at the moment and the Elevate Prize would help us accelerate the implementation, create visibility and provide exposure of our work to others