The Impact Compass
Welcome to the Impact Compass Podcast. In this podcast, we explore opportunities in the nonprofit and social impact space and amplify the impact of their leaders. We do this by finding amazing nonprofit and social impact organizations and their leaders, we share their stories, their triumphs, and their struggles in this dynamic, complex, and competitive space. By doing this, we hope to,
· Showcase how the work of these amazing leaders and their organizations is impacting and changing their communities.
· Second, Inspire a new generation of nonprofit and social impact professionals determined to create an even better world.
· Third, inform the sector of new and emerging practices from nonprofits and social impact practices in Africa. And,
· Make them findable so that they can be fundable.
The Impact Compass
Episode 6: Building 911/ Emergency for Kenya with Dr. Ben Wachira
Picture this - you have a child choking at home or you have been involved in a road accident, what do you do? Many of us will be at a loss. Not just from the shock of it, but for not knowing what to do. Dr. Benjamin Wachira has an audacious goal of building a 911 system for Kenya. His dream of saving lives started off with a goal to be a medical doctor, and today has set him on uncharted waters - an endeavour that has not only saved other people’s lives but his own.
From being the first certified emergency medicine physician in Kenya, he has ensured that there are emergency medicine policies and laws, and also established emergency medicine as a specialisation in Kenya since 2017.
Doing this could not have been possible without the contribution of the nonprofit sector. Dr. Ben helped found the Emergency Medicine Foundation Kenya, a non-governmental organization (NGO) supporting the Kenyan government and emergency healthcare providers across Kenya to save lives by strengthening the emergency healthcare system. Through this work, he has developed education programs for the general public and health workers, set up emergency departments across hospitals in Kenya, developed ambulance dispatch systems, changed policies, and on a steady march to getting functional 911/emergency systems across the region.
Incorporating technology into this work, EMKF has developed the CasualtyApp and Ambulensi - Swahili for "Ambulance", a web-based ambulance dispatch system. They are currently developing an AI-enabled 911 system for Kenya. Dr. Ben is definitely a pioneer in this system disruption. As he aptly captures it, “no one should die simply because help was too far — or arrived too late”
Please learn more about this amazing work at www.emergencymedicinekenya.org