Change Making Women

Ziada quizzes Mary Ann about fundraising; how to get started, what you need to have in place and how to go about proving what you have achieved afterwards. This episode is full of practical tips and ideas if you want to get a charitable, NGO or not-for-profit project off the ground.

In this podcast we interview Lilly Oyare, the Director of Little Rock, an Inclusive Early Childhood Development Project in Kibera, Nairobi. She tells us about how she gave up her job to start this project to provide education to children from the informal settlement and how her vision has grown from the five children she originally wanted to help in 2003 to the hundreds, including many disabled children, whose lives have been changed since. Along the way she explains how she accidentally became a passionate advocate for inclusion, how she has been able to develop and expand the project and gives us her advice about getting your own change making project started as well.

On todays show Ziada and Mary Ann discuss attitudes to entrepreneurship in Tanzania and the UK and how the internet is changing how entrepreneurs work all over the world. We ask whether people in rural areas are being left behind as entrepreneurship gets easier for those who are well connected? We also talk cash economies, chutney and what happens when you have too many tomatoes? We ask each other what we think is innovative in business right now? Discuss how companies like Uber and Air BnB are spreading their reach by solving our problems and Ziada wisely tells us that being an entrepreneur simply means giving people the solutions they are looking for and then not giving up!

In this episode Ziada and Mary Ann speak about about menstruation and how the taboos about it affected our lives growing up both in Tanzania and in the UK. They reflect on the fact that having periods is such a normal part of our expereince as women, even if we can't talk about it and how not talking about how menstruation and our cycles affect us it makes things harder. We do some honest talking about the particular challenges we each expereince when we bleed and Mary Ann talks about how you can start to get more in tune with your menstrual cycle and plan you work and life accordingly. We also share something about how we experienced our first bleed, about the fact that the number one reason for girls dropping out of school is because they can't afford sanitary products and Ziada speaks about why that needs to change and what the Tanzanian government is doing about it. We conclude that the change should start with us breaking the taboo and talking about our bleeding with the women and men in our lives.

The second of our two part launch episode in which we introduce you to the women behind Change Making Women. Today we talk about Mary Ann and the different ways in which she has tried to make a difference through her work on childhood disability, mental health and even the Nia movement practice which she teaches. We find out what happened when she got 'burnt-out' change making and how she has picked herself up and is now creating a community for change making women offering them support, connections and learning to help them stay well resourced in their work. We also find out what food she says she could eat for the rest of her life!

The first of a two part launch episode in which we introduce you to the women behind Change Making Women. Today we talk about what Kipilipili means and why Ziada believes it is so important to love your natural hair, how Kipilipili has grown organically from a simple idea about sourcing products to a business with a change making mission behind it. Ziada also talks about how she works on the project with a close friend and gives us some tips about how to make a business partnership work if you are already friends, the huge importance and benefits of listening to your audience, how she is maximising social media channels to expand the impact of Kipilipili and mixing making a difference with a business that provides what real women actually want.

Coming Soon: Change Making Women is the podcast for women who make a difference with Ziada Abeid in Tanzania & Mary Ann Clements (formerly Mhina) in London.