Smart Girls Uganda

Jamila Mayanja is an award-winning Ugandan social entrepreneur and educator. She is the Founder and CEO of Smart Girls Uganda, a social enterprise that empowers and supports girls and women through trainings to build their life and economical skills. Smart Girls has famous girls and women empowerment programs like the Girls with Tools where they offer hands-on training to vulnerable girls and young women in male-dominated non-traditional STEM careers like automotive and electrical engineering. She also innovated a recycled solar smart bag -- a comprehensive menstrual hygiene kit/backpack with educational programming designed with and for girls in Uganda. To date, Smart Girls Uganda has trained 300 young women and helped keep more than 30,000 adolescent girls in school during their menstruation periods.

 

As to Jamila's connection to Hanover and the Upper Valley, she was in residence with us at Dartmouth for 6 weeks in 2015 as a part of the  Young African Leaders Initiative (YALI), and returns frequently to visit her Upper Valley “family”, including her host mother, Carola Lea, who lives at Kendall and will also be joining our meeting.