As part of our series of community calls, members of the Taking the Lead network come together regularly to learn from the experiences and expertise of one another.
For our call in August 2024, we were joined by Daniel Mekonnen and Vanessa Ishimwe from Cohere, who spoke about ways to remove structural barriers and the root causes of lack of access or insufficient funding, including how to shift donor mindsets and remove donor-imposed barriers.
Daniel Mekonnen is the Head of Advocacy at Cohere. He doubles this with his other role as a Geneva-based Independent Consultant for International Human Rights Law & International Refugee Law. Among other things, he is a Member of the Editorial Board of the International Journal of Refugee Law, published by Oxford University Press. He comes with a lived experience of forced displacement.
Vanessa Ishimwe is a humanitarian entrepreneur and a refugee leader living in Kyaka II refugee settlement in Uganda. For more than 10 years, she has served as the Program Director at Youth Initiative for Development in Africa (YIDA), a refugee organization that focuses on creating employment and educating refugees. Vanessa is also a founder of Authentic African Works, an enterprise that provides employable technical skills to young refugee women in Uganda through making and selling leather products.
With a knack for leadership, she is currently establishing a network of refugee women-led organizations aimed at advancing opportunities and fostering inclusion for refugee women leaders. Vanessa serves on the Youth Advisory Committee at the World University Service of Canada, advising the organization on refugee youth-related issues, such as inclusion. She isparticularly determined to leverage her knowledge and experience to serve her community by advocating for equal access to opportunities for women and youth.
The Taking the Lead community calls are being hosted by MobLab Collective's Emma You Biermann. Emma's mother was herself a refugee from Cambodia who fled to the UK in the 1970s as a result of US bombings on her country. Emma is a transformational trainer, facilitator, strategist and physical movement practitioner, working for trauma informed systems change.
During the call, interpretation was provided by Na Takallam.
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