MY JOURNEY WITH D.O.T
Hello, my name is Jann Awuor. I am 23 years old and I come from Kisumu, Kenya.
I joined DOT because I wanted to get more knowledge on entrepreneurship and use this knowledge to run my business and change my community.
Just before I joined college, I used to run a cloth line business within Kisumu town. I incurred a huge loss because then, I didn’t have the technical know-how of managing and running a business. Though I had a passion for what I was doing.
In college I pursued Public Health and I got to learn some little bit of entrepreneurship as a unit. It was then that I realized I needed to pursue this unit to understand fully on how to become a better entrepreneur and then, revive my cloth line business.
This is when I first heard about DOT through a WhatsApp group. A friend had just shared a poster about an Organization that was looking for young people of ages 19–29 years to join and become social innovators and community changers. To lead community change and become a Social Innovator, one had to undergo a Start Up! foundation skills training that empowers young women and men on entrepreneurship and ICT skills.
I joined D.O.T a month just after I had finished my college. This came at the right time for me. Besides getting empowered on entrepreneurship skills, I learned about life skills that included personal development that would make me a responsible citizen in future. I met other young great leaders that were fundamental to my development and my journey became easier and enjoyable because we could connect and share our personal experiences. I learnt that, just like me, they also faced challenges of their own though in a different context.
Today I am a community leader working for D.O.T, and since my beginning, I have trained more than 150 young men and women on entrepreneurship and basic ICT and still more to train. I see young people use this knowledge to either start businesses, gain meaningful employment and or others like me try to change their communities in a positive way.
I take a look back at how things have changed in my favour since I joined D.O.T. I may not necessarily revive my cloth line business today, not because I can’t but because my perspective on how to run a successful business is even much better.
Tomorrow, I won’t just start a business, but I will design a product that will address the challenges that affect my customers and the people in my community.
