Impact Stories

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  Fellow(s): Houda Chakiri

  Country: Morocco

  Region: MENA

  Cohort: 2012

  Project/Action: Fellow’s project AfChix expands reach with USAID funding

  Policy Area(s): Economic Impact, Education Diplomacy/Mentoring, Empowering Women and Girls, Entrepreneurship, Professional Growth, Youth Engagement

  2012 fellow Houda Chakiri is a board member and project coordinator for AfChix, an initiative that addresses the digital gender divide through digital skills trainings, supporting women-led enterprises and advocating for digital inclusion. The initiative – already named a round one winner in 2018 – was recently named a round three winner of the Women Connect Challenge, a USAID-funded challenge that solicits global solutions that transform the ways women access and use technology.
  Round three of the challenge, which focused on scale, replicability and private sector partnerships supporting emerging technologies, awarded four initiatives that are advancing women’s digital development. The AfChix project, “Scaling up Women-Led Community Networks for Women’s Prosperity,” will work with community networks in Kenya, Morocco, Namibia and Senegal to harness the power of digital technologies, partnerships and collaborations for the prosperity of women. “We will empower underserved women communities to use technology to improve their livelihoods and small businesses,” said Houda, who will work as Morocco’s project coordinator to identify and customize digital skills and literacy training programs for women. The digital training will be delivered via MOOCs (Massively Open Online Courses) in order to reach the most women in Africa, and will focus on using smartphones, digital marketing, working with online customers and more. “We hope to reach one million women aged 18 and above to strengthen their participation in the digital society,” says Houda.​

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  Report Date: 4/26/21

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  Fellow(s): Gisele Beatrice Sonfack

  Country: Cameroon

  Region: SSA

  Cohort: 2016

  Policy Area(s): Education Diplomacy/Mentoring, Empowering Women and Girls, Professional Growth, Youth Engagement

  2016 fellow Gisele Beatrice Sonfack was recently named a recipient of the 2021 Schlumberger Faculty for the Future Fellowship, a program that supports women from developing countries to pursue advanced graduate degrees in STEM fields at leading universities abroad. Gisele is a researcher, assistant professor and founder of WENTECH, an initiative that empowers young girls ages 13 to 18 with STEM skills through workshops, conferences and events.
  Gisele has begun two years of postdoctoral research at France’s Université d’Orléans, studying at its engineering facility, Polytech Orléans. There, she will work on developing an intelligent electricity grid that can identify the consumer use on an electrical network in order to provide optimal management to both energy suppliers and consumers. Gisele reflected on her accomplishment in a recent post, saying, “This is an opportunity to tell all those who follow me that anything is possible for those who have the will and the commitment. Believe in ourselves.”​

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  Report Date: 4/26/21