ICOKE Ventures, Marketing their potentials and business

  • Icoke Ventures
  • Kenya
  • #Employment
    #Human Rights
    #Education

ICOKE Ventures, Marketing their potentials and business

34% $1,707 Achieved Achieved

D-39

Funding Target ㅣ$5,000

D-39 2024-09-04is the last day

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Impact Employment 20% Human Rights 30% Education 50%
Education
Icoke Ventures Kenya
Impact Employment Human Rights Education

 

CEO of ICOKE Ventures
Wanjira Maina

Greetings! I am Wanjira from Kenya. Two years ago, I took a leap of faith, betting on the potentials of our refugees in Kakuma Refugee Camp. Would like to listen to the story of how I started ICOKE ventures nurturing their potentials and dreams?

Kakuma refugee camp is one of the oldest refugee camps and inhabited by a population of 201,600 refugees. The refugees are mainly from DR Congo, Burundi, South Sudan, Ethiopia, Somali, Uganda, Rwanda and many other countries.

Youth and women make up the largest number of the population, and unfortunately they lack of job opportunities due to the severe living conditions in the camp. They cannot leave the camp at will nor search for opportunities. Some youth result in negative coping mechanisms to handle stress and poor conditions, this often leads to depression, alcohol abuse, teenage pregnancy and early childhood marriage.

Over the past 8 years, I have immersed myself in marginalized communities, collaborating with non-governmental organizations to implement livelihood and education projects in Marsabit, Dadaab, and Kakuma. Then, an encounter in 2020 changed the course of my life.

I met this talented young man in Kakuma with physical fitness training skills but no guidance of where to start for his training sessions. Since I knew many people in the camp, I introduced them and helped him form a group so that he could begin his first fitness training session. Later on, he organized Fitgang Fitness Group, which grew into a successful team building service provider in the region. I also collaborated with a media company and a food business, both now successful. This became evident that they only lack of information, exposure, and platforms for refugees to sell services, apparently not their potentials and creativeness.

Through these experiences, I have been inspired by the unwavering passion and dedication I witnessed among community members. Recognizing their immense potential, I made a decision to work with them, promoting their services, talents, and products. In 2021, I took a leap of faith, quitting my job to pursue my social enterprise. This led to the creation of ICOKE Ventures to empower refugee creatives and entrepreneurs.

ICOKE Ventures is a women led enterprise operating in Kakuma from 2021 and registered as a social enterprise in 2022. We have 10 members, six females and four males. Our mission is to create decent work and build self reliance for refugee creatives. We offer marketing services to socialpreneur, entrepreneurs and creatives from marginalized communities living in Turkana county. Namely, SNS marketing, TikTok, Podcasts and filmmakings are what they get from us. We are able to link local entrepreneurs with available markets in and outside Kakuma. Business is more than just producing goods but marketing what they can do.

Furthermore, we create media contents on refugee & Female advocacy by ourselves, as we believe they possess their full potentials. Through refugee & Female advocacy and content creation on our social media we share scholarship, grants and job opportunities which has benefited the communities we work with. For our content creation services we have created job opportunities for 7 youth who works with us as filmmakers and photographers. And we have trained 100 refugee creatives in social media marketing skills.

However, we still lack the capacity to train more women and youth who come to us for capacity building as venue for workshops are very expensive in Kakuma. To be competitive, we need a place where we can offer podcasting, studio photography, filmmaking and social media training.

The center will work as our office and offer the local community and youth creatives a space to work, hire and access content creation tools and equipment. The facility will also be rented out for meetings and small groups training. To make it even lively we shall host exhibitions, live concerts and have a small exhibition room selling visual arts, photography and handcrafted items made in Kakuma.

We will become the biggest marketing production media house in Kakuma by establishing a sustainable modern furnished freelancer working space for refugees and creatives.

Support ICOKE Ventures and help create an accessible center for the communities they serve!

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    2023-07-13

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