At 21, she is the youth Governor for Bomet County
Aggressive, resilient and outgoing, are the three words Abby Chebet uses to describe herself, perhaps due to her massive achievement at such a young age.
At only 21, this final year studying Bachelor of Commerce and CPA at the Multimedia University already has so many feathers under her cap. She is the serving youth Governor of Bomet County; a position she took on in July last year.
But that's not all that she is. Abby is also the co-founder and finance manager of a group from Multi-Media University that came up with the Virdis App, which helps, in fact-checking for consumers to differentiate between fake and real products. Others in the App development were Lilian Waita, Eric Munene, and Patricia Mativo.
"We also came up with our Smart Recycling Bin that uses AI machine learning to distinguish waste and rewards consumers when they use it," says Abby.
And with this, they entered the Hultprize regional competition, a global student movement where students come up with a project to provide solutions for problems in their community, targeting to directly and indirectly, impact more than 100,000 people by 2030.
"The competition ran from last year December to September this year. It was held in Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur where we had more than 70 teams from across the globe with only two African teams—ourselves (Virdismart Global) and a Nigerian team," she explains.
Their project won the first position and proceeded for the digital global accelerator phase which was held in September in London, United Kingdom, but due to the pandemic, they couldn't travel to participate.
Abby has also been at the forefront in providing innovative solutions for problems in her community. In 2018 she started The Ladys Heart Foundation, to enlighten girls on menstrual hygiene and provide school mentorships with her quest to end teenage pregnancies.
This is a student-led organisation whose objectives are based on UN SDGs of quality education, where they conduct school mentorship and sanitation, as well as enlighten girls on menstrual hygiene and ensure access to menstrual hygiene products.
She also leads a team of university students in different university chapters creating a platform for them to transform their communities. "We have so far reached out to over 3000 girls."
"I started The Ladys Heart Foundation because of the high numbers of teenage pregnancy in my home county Bomet. It has been named severally as one of the top five leading counties in teenage pregnancy."
Her efforts haven't gone unnoticed. In 2019 she was recognised as the Sustainable Development Goal SDG 4 ambassador of the year, a fete that was followed by the 2020 Zuri Awards Young Achievers honour.
"The SDG 4 ambassador award was because of my work in promoting quality education and we got partners to work with because of it."
At 21, isn't she handling too much on her plate? "My family has had my back," she says. Still, she admits, it hasn't been easy.
"At first my dad was worried that this would divert my attention from my school work. But I have so far proved to them that I can balance as my good grades show," Abby says.
"In fact, with the expectations outside here, I feel the pressure to study more," she adds.
And how does she juggle all this with classwork? "I have so much free time since I have no afternoon classes, just morning classes between Monday and Thursday," she says. For her accounting exams, she studies out of class and sits for exams. "I have to allocate some time to be in the school library," she says on studying for her CPA course.
Abby has also has created a good rapport with her lecturers, which has made her classwork easier. "I have invited some of them to mentor some of our students and the response has always been positive."
Besides all that, Abby also runs online enterprises Fabi cake and gift shop using social media as a marketing tool. "I started this business during the pandemic when schools were closed. I bake cakes and sell them through Fabi cake, whereas, Gift house entails packaging gifts," she says.
Time management has been a great asset and has enabled Abby to set time for herself as a young woman. "I do go out like any other young woman my age. I have four friends and we save up to try out new affordable places together," she chuckles.
In the future, Abby is keen to pursue her passions as she continues to interact with young girls, mentor them and strive to get solutions to challenges that they face. BY DAILY NATION
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