The Standing On Our Shoulders(SoOS) program links and supports women while focusing on philanthropy. Senior professional women offer coaching and support to talented women within a team that is united around a fundraising objective.
“If we are going to dramatically lift the number of female leaders we need to stand on each other’s shoulders.” says Dr Kakenya Ntaiya.
The team members share and leverage each other’s skills to undertake initiatives to support tertiary education for women in developing countries. The Standing On Our Shoulders program is arranged so that teams of women work towards a fundraising target.
The Standing on Our Shoulders program began in 2018 as an initiative of Kristin Stubbins, PwC Partner and Chair of Women for Change and Virginia Briggs, Partner at Minter Ellison. In that year 4 teams engaged in events and activities to raise funds that are providing tertiary education for the first girls who graduated from Kakenya’s Center for Excellence. The initiatives undertaken by these teams included a music event, a leadership/ mentoring breakfast with Julie Bishop and a corporate spelling bee competition. A number of the women involved formed long standing support relationships with other women in their teams – all at different stages of their careers. Following the success of this pilot, the Standing on Our Shoulders program continues in 2020.
Two Standing on our Shoulders teams were launched in February with a further 2-3 teams expected to join the program in Q2 2020. These teams have participants from several different corporate organisations, media and education. The current teams completed 3 International Women’s Day events involving Dr Kakenya Ntaiya during the first week of March and have more initiatives planned. [Do we want to describe or link to the events?]
The Standing On Our Shoulders program in 2020 will contribute to an endowment fund that will enable future graduates of Kakenya’s Center of Excellence to attend tertiary education.