How My Experience Determined My Ikigai
By Kakooza Hakim
This essay received an Honourable Mention in the Global Changemakers Essay Competition 2020.
From the first time I hopped into my mother’s hands, I have been an exceedingly ambitious kid. The deep-seated desire to be different and to impact the community around me has always been my third name. However, this is closely tied to the backbone of experiences I had as a kid.
This is my story. I was three years old but I still vividly remember the pain and the look of agony in my father’s face as he bid the world farewell due to a heart attack. My mother’s shrieks and the hullabaloo that ensued thereafter wasn’t enough to restore him back to life. No one within a kilometer’s radius had the basic first aid skills necessary to marry his soul back with the body. I stared on, unaware of what awaited us…
My mother thereafter became our sole breadwinner. There was never a day with an assurance of food. We lived off the mercy of other relatives. A heart attack had robbed us of our breadwinner and had tossed us into the abyss of oblivion and uncertainty. What hurts me most is the fact that he could have been saved. It’s the lack of knowledge of the first aid procedure for heart attacks that robbed us of our dad. The pain of knowing that he could have been saved lives with me up to this very day.
That is why I resolved not to allow anyone to lose a person they love in a similar fashion. As a result of my past experiences, I embarked on a lifelong journey of conquering this heinous global killer. These are the steps I took.
I enrolled for robotics classes in a local organization called Fundi Bots. The excellent trainers at Fundi Bots and experts from the Uganda Heart Institute guided and inspired me to design my first prototype of a mobile electrocardiograph and defibrillator. I endeavored to test it out thereafter. The feedback I got unraveled the bigger problem.
The majority of the people in the community were ignorant about the causes and prevention measures of cardiovascular diseases! This inspired me to do more than make another defibrillator. I partnered with Gholamzadeh Omid, a fellow student in Italy to form Aid You.
Aid You is a community-based initiative aimed at leveraging technology to create awareness on heart-related diseases and train youths and students in basic life support skills. We have piloted the project in 12 schools and three villages in Kampala in the last two years, engaging over 700 learners and teachers in the community. We do this in our free time. We essentially use our personal savings to sponsor most of the activities.
In 2019, we won a $1000 accelerator grant from Peace First because of the impact we were having on the communities around us. This went a long way in accelerating our activities. We are currently using part of that funding to develop an advanced nursing digital application that will bring together a team of volunteers that will provide fast and reliable emergency assistance to heart attack victims in sub-Saharan Africa. These volunteers will first receive a free three months Emergency Medical Service Training course from certified partners in the medical sector.
Afterwards, we will equip them with the required tools to be used in the field in case of an emergency. Already, we have 20 volunteers in Uganda and Italy even before its launch!
We envision a world where youth are more engaged in the medical rescue sector, building a sense of community using technology, and reducing the death toll from heart-related diseases.
Global Changemakers has an unshakeable mission of supporting youth to create positive change in their communities. A global pioneer in supporting youth-led development, they have trained youth from over 180 countries and provided grants to over 360 youth-led projects, which have had a combined impact on over 6,2 million people. www.global-changemakers.net
DISCLAIMER: The views expressed in this article belong to the writer and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Editor or Global Changemakers.
