Meet Anne Okelo of
based in the Nyanza region of South Western Kenya. She is an environmentalist, human rights defender, climate change trainer and passionate advocate for women and girls empowerment at the grassroots level.Anne is also a new writer here on Substack! Please visit her Substack and check out her first few posts which include links to practical and educational videos on how to live a sustainable life on her YouTube Channel of the same name, which has 5,900 subscribers.
My passion is making a difference in the lives of the most vulnerable population by training them on very simple sustainable solutions which are cost effective and can easily be replicated anywhere to help increase their household income while fighting the impacts of climate change. I am also passionate about women and girls empowerment through training them on livelihood issues, entrepreneurship skills and provision of sanitary pads to help keep girls in school and prevent teen pregnancy.
Anne is well-known in the Nyanza region of South Western Kenya. She has built up a reputation as a ChangeMaker not only for raising funds to drill a solar-powered well in her home community of Angiro in 2010, but for inspiring a new generation of girls, mothers, and fathers to send their daughters to school. Wherever Anne goes, whether it’s on a professional assignment or out in the field “for fun” to shoot educational footage for her YouTube Channel, people know her.
Transforming Personal Disappointments into Opportunities to Help Others
Anne’s early life and her struggles to break free from traditional gender paradigms in Kenya is documented in the The Well of Dreams, Journey of Anne Okelo, a documentary by Speaker Films (2012) and available on Amazon Prime.
The Well of Dreams website provides a short background on Anne’s early life which led her to advocate and raise funds for a well to be drilled in her hometown:
Anne had the job of walking 8 miles most mornings to retrieve a bucket of river water for the family to use for the day. Because of the scarcity of water she often had to stand in line once she got there and that would make her late to school which earned her an almost daily beating.
At one point in her youth, Anne was an outcast because she refused to get married at age 14 as was expected of her. She said she observed girls her age getting married and having many children. The husbands had many wives and AIDS was prevalent which often lead to an early death. She did not want that and she believed that her only way out was to focus on her education. Anne did that and she went on to graduate from the University of Nairobi and earned a masters degree in nonprofit administration from West Chester University in May 2010.
Anne began to share her desire to return to her village and have a fresh water well installed. Over a period of six months with the support of many friends, Anne was able to raise the $35,000 needed and on Christmas Eve of 2010 a solar powered well was installed in the village of Angiro, Kenya.
Anne spoke at length during our interview about the motivation behind wanting to bring water to her community.
When I was younger, school age, particularly when I went to the US for college, I was on a revenge mission. I kept saying to myself, I have to go back and change the lives of women. I have to go back home and change the lives of those girls – no more abusing of them.
When I finished schooling, that revenge transformed. I started to look at my experiences in a positive way, not negative. I said to myself, “Despite the pain you’ve been through, you can help them.”
My initial focus was to help girls finish high school. I am the only one who was educated in my family. I didn’t want to go through what the other women were going through. No matter what, I won’t go through what they went through.
I identified the key to helping girls finish high school is to make sure there is clean water.
The Link Between Girls’ Education and Water
This wasn’t the first I had heard of the link between girls’ education completion and access to clean water in Kenya. Girls bear the brunt of housework and domestic duties in many cultures around the world under normal conditions. The inequity becomes increasingly exacerbated with the ever-growing impacts of climate change. An article by World Bank Blogs, for instance, on why we must engage adolescent girls in climate change solutions points to the disproportionate negative impact that climate change has on girls. They are the first to be kept home from school to fetch water, the first to not eat when food is scarce, and face earlier and earlier marriages to help manage the number of mouths to feed at home.
Not only does walking for water and other household duties keep them school, so does lack of access to sanitary pads and teenage pregnancy. In fact, walking for water is linked with higher instances of teenage pregnancy.
Anne explains:
Teen pregnancies are related to walking for water. These girls walk 3 to 4 km every day. The moment you leave your home a man starts coming up to you and will walk with you on the way… You can not say no forever. They will come along and seduce you. Girls are being pushed to the wall literally and figuratively and raped along the way.
Easy access to clean water, therefore, is a critical intervention which can prevent many of these injustices and increase the chances girls can stay in and finish school.
As a result of the well that was drilled in 2011 in Anne’s village, the impacts on schooling and public health are enormous.
Since the installation of the well, one girl has a PhD, 10 girls have degree certificates and are working, over 200 girls have completed their high school and are in college. In the same village, no one has died because of a cholera outbreak. We used to lose 10 to 15 every year because of cholera. That is just one incident, I have 7 other villages that I have supported.
A Catalyst for Change
Anne has gone on to do much more than providing access to water for her village. She has served as a catalyst creating long-lasting impact for many other individuals, families and communities.
For example, in one village she trained the community members on the production of energy cook stoves, changing the lives of women and also the community.
In another village, she introduced community banking. And, yet in another, she is helping widows start a poultry farm cooperative for income generation.
The list of how Anne has leveraged her knowledge, networks, and solutions to help people is a long one. It is a testament to how all boats can be lifted by establishing networks for information-sharing and disseminating easily replicable solutions to common problems through those networks. This is one of the main reasons that Anne’s YouTube Channel is so impactful. She is helping people who share similar problems gain access to easily replicable solutions.
Whether on Professional Assignment or Volunteering, Anne Assesses Needs, Imparts Knowledge, and Documents & Shares Solutions
Anne consults for external nonprofits as well as has her own nonprofit called Alliance for Sustainable Livelihood Improvement Program. Whenever she goes out professionally, she always conducts an environmental assessment and situational analysis, looking for whatever solutions will enhance rathern tahn destroy the environment.
I design programs around existing situations. Not only that, but I bring in the business aspect of sustainability. If you just train and leave, how do they sustain? If you bring in the business aspect, they will see the money value. They will see how it changes their live and sustainability.
Her work-related travels bring her up close and personal to a wide variety of challenges and situations. After May floods, Anne visited some of the villages that are still reeling from destruction with many families living in makeshift shelters. Anne will make calls for support on her Facebook page and often gets donations.
One of her primary causes is making sure school-aged girls have the necessary sanitary pads for menstrual hygiene to stay in school.
In Kenya 65% of girls and women cannot afford sanitary pads. Seven out of ten girls miss a week of school monthly as a result. While the Kenyan Basic Education Act amendment of 2017 stipulated that free and quality sanitary towels be provided in government schools, significant barriers still exist according to AMREF, an international nonprofit committed to driving community-led and people-centered primary health care systems while addressing social determinants of health.
Sometimes when I get support, I use it to donate sanitary pads. I will donate whatever I get. Everywhere I go they are asking me, "Can you bring something to our girls?” I give talks as often as I can about why it’s important to stay in school. I always try to leave them with some pads, whatever I have to give them.
In addition to advocating for menstrual health and hygiene, Anne is an advocate for sexual reproductive knowledge and awareness amongst teens recognizing that teen pregnancy is also a leading cause of preventing girls from completing their education.
The Sustainable Innovations YouTube Channel: Documenting & Sharing Solutions
In addition to advocating for clean water, girls education, menstrual hygiene and sexual/reproductive awareness amongst teens, Anne is a media maven creating over 100 videos on her YouTube Channel to bring sustainable solutions to common problems to the masses, particularly in the area of climate change adaptation and sustainable living.
Anne’s YouTube Channel called Sustainable Innovations has been active since May 2012. There, she offers free information to her 5,900 followers and beyond where they can learn in the comfort of their own homes if they access to the internet.
From her Channel:
This channel helps you cut through the noise to understand fundamental climate change related issues and best practices to tackle it exploring very simple and yet practical innovations in green farming, sustainable energy solutions and water conservation methods that can be done anywhere. The fight against climate change requires all hands on deck and together, we can tip the scale. Change begins here!
Many groups are referred to her or reach out to her for technical knowledge. They invite her to come out and visit. If she is able, she travels with her volunteer camera team, documents their work, and posts on YouTube, with the hope that the lessons learned, the technology shared, and the solutions discovered can be replicated by others. To her, this is fun. It’s a volunteer activity, but also a life-fulfilling passion.
She partners with a documentary team of four students from a local college. The way she found them was that they once came to buy cake from her daughter’s bakery. They agreed to work provided she provide them with free cake for their birthdays.
Anne’s primary expense therefore is the transportation for herself as well as for the team plus lunch
Usually it is a full-day of work including transportation. The students return with the material and edit at no cost so long as I provide cake for their birthdays.
Anne has a list of people doing very innovative things that she wants to visit to document and share with her viewers, but doesn’t have the capacity… yet.
Anne’s YouTube Channel by the Numbers
Anne has grown her Channel organically without any promotion to 5,900 subscribers.
Total hours of video viewed per month - 300
Over the lifetime of her YouTube project, people have spent 15,400 viewing hours.
Over 247,000 unique individuals have viewed her conen.
Anne is new to TikTok but already has 6,000 followers. “I joined it just to have fun; but found that there is an audience there. The watch time on TikTok for my profile is higher than I expected!”
Subscribers to her YouTube Channel can pledge a monthly subscription in the “join for perks” section. “If I can get 20 people paying $2/month, then I can use that to fund my expenses to do more documentation. And maybe buy equipment.” Full disclosure - I am one of her paying subscribers!
Next on the Horizon
In addition to building her YouTube Channel to bring more sustainable innovations to the people of Kenya and beyond, Anne has two other priorities: a poultry farming collective for widows and continuing to provide sanitary pads for girls so they can stay in school.
Poultry Farming Collective for Widows
Anne has already laid the foundation for and is ready to launch a Widows’ Poultry Farm Collective. Poultry farming is Anne’s expertise; she does it for her own income generation to make ends meet. Check out this informative video on how to start a poultry business.
She is currently working with a group of widows who are interested in starting their own poultry farming collective. In addition to starting that collective, Anne plans to develop a group savings program, something she has helped facilitate with other groups.
Sanitary Pads for Girls
As mentioned earlier, Anne is passionate about keeping girls in school. One way to ensure this is to make sanitary pads accessible to all girls in school. Whenever Anne gets a donation, she shares as much as she can to purchase pads for school-age young girls. So far, she has helped 20 schools in desperate situations who need support for sanitary towels.
The Old Women At The Well
In closing, it seems so appropriate to return to the well, the solar-powered well she helped dig in her hometown.
Anne spoke emotionally to me about the old women of her village at the well.
They go to the water well every day to pray that God continue to provide water. They pray over it. On the well. Every day.
That is the reason why I go the extra mile.
If it is going to change lives, I do it.
Where in the World is Anne?
Anne Okelo, Sustainable Innovations, Kenya