Kenya’s Nelly Cheboi named CNN Hero of the Year
Kenya’s Nelly Cheboi and the founder of TechLit Africa, a nonprofit organization that gives thousands of students in rural Kenya access to refurbished computers and the opportunity for a better future, has been named the 2022 CNN Hero of the Year.
Cheboi resigned from a well-paying position as a software engineer in 2019 in Chicago in order to build computer labs for Kenyan schoolchildren.
Cheboi accepted the honor alongside her mother, who she credited with putting in a lot of effort to educate her family.
Cheboi will receive $100,000 (KES 12.3 million) as the CNN Hero of the Year to further her work.
She and the other top 10 CNN Heroes acknowledged at the gala on Sunday each receive a cash prize of $10,000 (KES 1.2 million), and thanks to a fresh partnership with CNN Heroes, they also get new grants, organizational training, and support from The Elevate Prize Foundation.
Nelly will also receive the Elevate Prize, which entitles her to a grant of $300,000 (KES 37 million) and additional assistance for her nonprofit organization worth $200,000 (KES 24.7 million).
Cheboi was given a full scholarship to Augustana College in Illinois in 2012 despite growing up in poverty in Mogotio, a rural township in Kenya. According to CNN, when she started her studies there, she had little to no computer experience and struggled to type her handwritten papers onto a laptop.
But when Cheboi enrolled in a programming course that was necessary for her mathematics major in her junior year, everything changed.
“When I discovered computer science, I just fell in love with it. I knew that this is something that I wanted to do as my career, and also bring it to my community,” she told CNN.
Cheboi quickly became aware of the extent to which computers were being discarded as businesses upgraded their technology infrastructure once she started working in the software industry.
After quitting their jobs, she and another software engineer co-founded TechLit Africa. Companies, academic institutions, and private citizens can donate computers to the nonprofit.
Before being shipped to Kenya, the hardware is cleaned and refurbished. It is given out to partner schools in rural areas where children between the ages of 4 and 12 attend daily lessons and frequently have the chance to interact with professionals, developing skills that will enhance their education and better position them for future employment.
Currently, Cheboi works with 10 schools; by the end of the next year, the organization hopes to partner with 100 more.
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