HTS to Expand Abroad
Results: 2 African countries and 1 European country have HTS Chapters
HTS was invited to speak on teen leadership at the U.S. State Department Pan-Africa Youth Leadership Program (PAYLP). Alex Mancevski shared how teens can become agents of change just by organizing friends and community neighbors toward a community-service goal, starting small, achieving results, and aiming to expand and improve always. PAYLP brings teen leaders from Sub-Saharan countries to America to be trained on social entrepreneurship, so Alex’s experience starting in 5th grade as a health advocate, resonated with them. Some PAYLP participants wanted to start HTS in their own countries, but their realities were really different. HTS volunteers did posters and exhibits about prevalent diseases in each chapter’s country for them to show back home, and encouraged the African teen leaders to do presentations at their own schools and at community events. There are teens in Burkina Faso, Sudan, Zambia and Peru who want to start an HTS Chapter.
These are the ones formed so far:
Gedeon Kakonde is a teen leader from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). He represented DRC at the U.S. State Department Pan-African Youth Leadership Program (PAYLP) in the summer of 2017. Gedeon received leadership training in Washington, DC.; Chicago, IL; and Austin, TX.
In Austin, Gedeon met Alex Mancevski, who was an invited PAYLP speaker on American teen leadership. Gedeon was inspired to create an African version of HTS that would cover preventable diseases that afflict his country. Gedeon lives in Lugumbashi, DRC’s 2nd largest city. Besides HTS, Gedeon leads a group whose goal is improving the quality of life in his town and has presented his ideas to U.S. Embassy officials at DRC. |
Levi Zwannah is the HTS leader in Liberia. He lives in small town far from the capital Monrovia.
Levi's Liberian project on organizing community street clean-ups was deemed the best among his U.S. State Department Pan-African Youth Leadership Program (PAYLP) peers. But lack of money for trash bins and bags has delayed its implementation. In the meantime, Levi shares what he learned in America and the posters HTS volunteers helped design for his clean-up efforts. Levi enjoyed Alex Mancevski’s robotics lessons to PAYLP participants and shares his robotics knowledge in Liberia using two robots Alex donated. Levi promotes STEM and started a robotics team he dreams would compete in USA someday. |
Despina Kochova is a Senior at Orce Nikolov public high school. She lives in Skopje, the capital of Macedonia. She plans to study at the National Faculty of Medicine and become a pediatrician.
Despina really appreciates HTS’s focus because she feels her peers don’t know about health issues. Despina wants to provide information and use science to raise health awareness about the rise of preventable diseases. She loves working with elementary school children. Despina likes reading books in many genres, including medical books. She likes going to the gym and working to improve her knowledge of English and German. |
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