We were lucky to catch up with Nathan Okiror recently and have shared our conversation below.
Nathan, appreciate you joining us today. Let’s kick things off with your mission – what is it and what’s the story behind why it’s your mission?
Our Mission at Imagine Her is to work with communities to accelerate the power and potential of women, girls, and youth as active leaders and social entrepreneurs creating sustainable solutions within their communities.
The story behind this mission started in 2013 when I was undertaking my undergraduate research project at University. I went to the rural communities of Serere district in Uganda where I witnessed the distressing conditions and stigma faced by girls during their menstrual cycles. These girls lacked access to sanitary supplies, leading to missed school days and worsening the stigma surrounding menstruation. Determined to make a change, I joined forces with my friends James and Fiona- who later became our co-founders and together we launched a community-based menstrual management project that placed boys and men at the forefront of catalyzing change. This initiative had a significant impact on various aspects, including girls’ school attendance, community attitudes towards menstrual health, and the involvement of men and boys in promoting reproductive health for girls and women.
However, despite the positive changes achieved, one prominent issue persisted in the communities where our project was implemented. Women and girls continued to face economic dependence on men for survival, which could be attributed to poverty, limited access to education and employment opportunities, inadequate access to business financing, and a lack of essential resources. Nevertheless, these women and girls aspired to become architects of their own empowerment and contribute to positive change. This realization prompted our organization to pivot towards economic empowerment in 2016.
Today, almost 800 million young people live in rural or semi-urban areas, critical to this, 440 million rural young people in Africa will enter the labor market by 2030. However, over 1 in 5 youth and worse still, one-third of young women in rural communities are not in employment, education, or training3. 80% of Uganda’s rural youth live in this reality today.
Beyond a life characterized by unemployment, underemployment, and economic dependence, the majority of young women, girls, and youth in rural areas with lower socioeconomic status whom we focus on – suffer an outsized impact from climate change disrupting access to food, sexual, and reproductive health services, affordable clean energy, clean water and sanitation, economic opportunities and education. This has accelerated and increased the vulnerability of young women and girls to high risks such as sexual and gender-based violence, forced marriages, and labor among others.
Intentional investment in rural girls, young women, and youth is a huge untapped opportunity that has monumental potential to drive sustainable rural development and economic growth. This propels our chances to reverse the current worrying trends in the climate, education, and food security sectors.
To achieve this fast forward, we work with communities to implement a human-centered impact model that equips them (girls, young women, and youth) with the skills they need to respond to their most critical challenges through our 3 programs (Social Enterprise & Innovation, Career Pathways, and Becoming). The guiding principle of our model is that those we work with decide what they want to do and choose the support and resources they need to do it.
Our big dream is to see a world where Ugandan women, girls, and youth are actively harnessing their potential, by initiating and advancing innovative and sustainable solutions to pressing needs in their communities.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
My name is Nathan Okiror and am the founder, and team leader of Imagine Her, a non-profit with a purpose of providing young women, girls, and youth with a robust innovation skillset and essential resources to create sustainable social ventures and achieve economic independence in Uganda. He has been recognized as a community-change influencer through the Swedish TV program Lärlabbet and has been featured on Shoutout Socal Los Angeles and the Uganda Radio Network. Nathan is also a co-founder of Pangea Publishing, a social enterprise that focuses on producing and developing learning resources that are culturally and linguistically relevant to the young language learners of Uganda. Nathan holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Social Work and Community Development from Kyambogo University, where he focused on Social Work and its role in transforming communities, and a postgraduate diploma in Social Work from Alison Institute. He is a YALI East Africa Regional Center and Robert Bosch Alumnus, as well as an Ashoka Xchangemaker and Perennial Fellow. He is currently a 2023 cohort member of the Collective Learning Initiative by the Issroff Family Foundation and the Gratitude Network Fellow 2023. Recently, he was nominated as MHM Champion 2021 in Uganda.
As a person, he is strongly guided by the principle that true community empowerment is centered on the individual experiencing the problem as the alternate principal designer of the solution.
Under Nathan’s leadership, Imagine Her has grown to 20+ staff, reaching 10,000+ communities collectively more broadly across several districts in Uganda. The organization has grown to build greater and stronger relationships accelerating its growth path.
Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?
In 2019, we faced numerous challenges as a nonprofit as we were still in the early stages of the organization, and our understanding of what we were doing was far from clear. Securing funding was a constant struggle, as donors were hesitant to support us due to our lack of a well-defined model. It was a frustrating time, and I even had to use my own salary earned from another job I was doing at that time while balancing with Imagine Her to ensure our employees were paid.
There were moments when I contemplated giving up and shutting down our operations. However, it was during this period that the COVID-19 pandemic emerged, bringing about significant changes, particularly for vulnerable young women and youth who were now facing even greater risks like unemployment, financial constraints that resulted in lack of food, poor health care, and malnutrition among their children.
In that moment, I saw an opportunity to refine our model and make it more effective to empower these people with innovation skills so that can create solutions to their own problems but also for the entire community. Gradually, our approach became clearer and more robust. And here we are today, having overcome those early challenges, with a stronger and more impactful model in place and with support from some of the big supporters in the world. You could also become part of this journey by investing in our work today through the following link https://imagineher.org/invest
Have any books or other resources had a big impact on you?
I’d like to highlight two impactful books that have influenced my approach to working with my team and guiding our organization, Imagine Her:
“Servant Leadership” by James A. has been transformative in how I manage and provide tailored support to our team. It has fundamentally changed my perspective on leadership.
“Manifesto for A Moral Revolution” by Jacqueline Novogratz struck a chord with me, particularly the chapter on “Listening to the Voices Unheard.” This section shed light on the importance of investing in rural communities, where people are closest to pressing global issues like climate change and food insecurity. This insight challenged us to refocus our efforts on rural communities, with a special emphasis on empowering young women, girls, and youth.
In addition to these books, we draw heavily on IDEO resources. Our curriculum and content are primarily derived from IDEO’s design thinking model and human-centered design principles. We adapt and refine this content to align with our mission, ensuring its effectiveness in addressing our core objectives.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://imagineher.org/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/imagine.her/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/imagineherIH
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathan-okiror-a7899b9b/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/ImagineHer2
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_fKrsJvGsBeFdipKfZU9KA
Image Credits
Peter Paul Tinkasiimire