 Welcome back and it's Tuesday Nakama Kawaiida, it's Entrepreneurship Tuesday. So I don't know about you but if I got the chance to learn and play at the same time, I think life will be a little bit easier. So joined to me today in studio are two able gentlemen who are going to tell us about an initiative that enables you to actually learn, play and be clean at the same time. Karibuni Sana. Thank you for having me. You can kindly introduce yourself starting with you. Okay, my name is Uafula Samuel. I'm a finalist student at Kenyatta University and I'm also the CEO and the founder of UHA 365. You're Jamaliza Kampas? Yes. Good morning, my name is Victor Cairo. I'm the CEO that is head of operations for ALI 365 and also I'm a nutritionist by profession. By profession, so you're done with university. Yeah, done. Are you guys are friends or are you just met in this business thing? We met in a competition and that is where our company was founded. A competition about what? It was a competition called that was brought in by making more health under the umbrella of Boringa Lane. In 2019 the competition was called Venture for Change Competition and we were asked to solve our challenges in the slums which were related to health and hygiene. So it was a competition between Kenyatta University and Strathmore University. So that is where we met with Victor and other two amazing co-founders. That's nice. So UHA 365, how many 365? Any can do. Any can do. So tell us more about this initiative Vincent Victor, sorry. So UHA 365 basically is a social enterprise that strives to address hygiene related diseases or hygiene education within our community, especially in slums. We realize that people in low income areas, let me use the word slums for this context. The children in particular, they do not have a firm foundation in knowledge education in hygiene. So UHA 365 uses play fun interactive approaches to educate children about hygiene and sanitation to build the knowledge gap and help them to adopt a hygiene culture that helps them prevent diseases that we all know when outbreaks come, they are affected and they end up dying. Most of them miss school. So in a nutshell that's what UHA 365 is all about. And what motivated you to choose health education? Why not something else? Why health? Interesting. So why health? So as I said before, the competition was based on the health industry. So I remember when we were going for market research to do design thinking. Once we stepped in the slums and there was this narrative that we would ask them questions like what is diarrhea to you? A child would say okay, diarrhea is like common cold, it's like Homer. And that drove me back to how I used to live when I was a little kid. I would experience the same cases, hygiene related issues because of the knowledge gap. So this made us to have the conversation like how are we going to solve this issue of knowledge gap because issues of water have been solved and issues of hand washing stations have been solved. So we went back and we saw that okay, hygiene education is there but according to our analysis and research we came to realize that the hygiene education being offered currently is not effective. So we said okay, why don't we try to use our fun approaches to ensure that these kids learn on proper hygiene and sanitation and at the same time play. So we were bringing up innovations like board games or board games called usurfing about whereby at least three participants would come in play, compete against each other and at the same time learn on proper hygiene and sanitation. We do not stop there. We are currently innovating different aspects whereby children can come in, have fun and also learn on proper hygiene and sanitation. And that would be through our innovative dance called Kanyaga Jams in English, step on the jams as you dance. So they are able to dance and at the same time do, for example, do things like the five steps of hand washing and they are able to learn as well as their dancing. And what are these five steps of hand washing? Maybe we could keep watching right now and we can educate them. So basically the five steps of hand washing are first of all, you wet your hands, make sure they are wet, then apply soap. Whether it's bath soap or liquid soap, then you start the process of creating a form. Then you rub your palms on the other end, then go in between the fingers, in the front and behind. Scrub the thumb on both sides. The wrists on both sides, then rinse. And when you rinse, you can dry or if there's a paper towel or a hand towel, you can use up. That's interesting. So I'm doing all this as I'm dancing. Yeah, there's a dance to that. And we're also trying to also incorporate songs so that it can be a fun interactive process because the end goal is to make sure that they find hygiene and enjoyable activity. So you say that you met in 2019, that's when Uhai 365 started. So, do you have a team of people who help you? And if you do, what does the team consist of? Okay, so we were, during the competition or during 2019, we formulated the company with four individuals, myself, Victor and other two amazing co-founders. So the other two amazing co-founders are Wendy Ondigo, who is in charge of product development and the technical side. And we also have Simon Josiah, who was currently the director of Halt Price Kenyatta University and is in charge of the technical aspects of it. So it brings up the aspect of innovation to produce our board games. Currently, we are trying to bring in innovation to produce our board games. We have a machine that will recycle waste plastics to design the board games. Okay, that's really interesting. So what is the education? How do you choose the schools? How do you identify the children to teach? Or do you just do like Piki Piki Ponki? Like what is the system of choosing the schools? Okay, thank you. So primarily we have to do a needs assessment. We have to identify which school is most vulnerable. Which school needs this innovation most? Because we identify there are some schools that are privileged and their children are well educated regarding hygiene. But there are those schools down, when you go into the community, Okondani, Kabisa, they don't have the knowledge, they don't have the facilities themselves. So those are the schools we target and we prioritize. And that's why our operations are mainly focused on in Mokoro Slam schools. That is why we find those kind of schools because they don't have the resources and the children themselves, they don't have sort of role models to tell them this is how you're supposed to do it. So that's how we do our identification. Needs assessment and identified schools need these innovations most. So what next after identifying a school? So after identifying a school, as you said, we approach the school and currently we've been working with private schools. So we come into the school and once we get the permission from the management the number one thing that we do is we assess, we get them in terms of the knowledge on proper hygiene and sanitation. So we identify if they basically know on proper hygiene and sanitation. So from after that we roll out our board games. Ok, wait a minute. So is there a question here that you know, like the students are supposed to answer Amma how do you know this school has inadequate information when it comes to hygiene? We randomly ask them questions like the one that I told you about would ask them what is diarrhea? It's like Homer. And number two, ask them questions like what are the critical points that you're supposed to wash your hands? Or what do you do after visiting the toilet? How many times do you brush your teeth? Those are the questions that we ask them. After that we gauge. For example you could have a score from 1 to 10 and we gauge the level. And from there we take them and roll out our board games. So our board games also have an education aspect of it. We teach them how to play the game. After they know they played. So they played in groups of three or four. So after playing the board games they implement. Because you came to realize you cannot just teach if you're not implementing. So our last step is to implement. So we would offer them hand washing stations whereby if they land on the five steps of hand washing they would come in and practice and we would see if they really got what they were learning. So do you do this for free? Like all that, are there some little bit cash? Yes, so in relation to that for the most needy school we do them for free. Like we've partnered with a school called Appianjus Primary School in Mukuru Slums. We've partnered with them and we're offering them free services. This is because there is need. And from the look of things they would prefer buying food rather than purchasing for hygiene education. So for them we do free but we sell our board games at $7. And this is to maybe other primary schools who I need. And maybe on top of that we also offer hygiene activations. You could have companies like Unilever so to mention other companies who want us to do hygiene activations like for example during the Global Sand Washing Day whereby we teach them on proper hygiene and sanitation using our different innovations. So how long does this program take? Like if I choose a school right now, how long will you be there in that school? Basically it takes depending on how easily we penetrate the school it takes between about three to six months but we usually don't intend to stay there long. What we do is we through incorporation with the school management we establish hygiene clubs so that we train a few then the students themselves train the rest of the students so that it's more sustainable and can work for years to come because now the knowledge is going to be passed from generation to generation. So we usually try to follow up for like three to six months but once we establish the clubs, ensure the structure and the systems are working we can now comfortably say that we have done our work and moved to another school. So you talked about dance and games. So I have a question. Are these the normal board games? Are there ways of incorporating hygiene education in the games? Yes, so it's a new innovation as I mentioned and it's a new board game and the name is called Usafin Abao. Usafin Abao means an ancient African, it means a board. So we bring in the aspect of snakes and ladders in the game but the board games have unique features or unique infographical message on proper hygiene and sanitation. Hygiene could be different aspects of hygiene because hygiene is general so it could have a board game that focuses on hand washing another one that focuses on dental hygiene and another one that focuses on menstrual hygiene. So like for the board game that we currently have which is called Usafin Abao it uses the psychological aspect of reinforcement whereby the positive hygiene practices are rewarded and the negative hygiene practices are punished. Wait, wait, explain that. So with my psychological knowledge I brought in the aspect of reinforcement. Basically reinforcement is you punish the bad habits and you reward the good habits. So the infographical messages in the board game have each aspect of the reinforcement. So we have good hygiene practices are the positive aspects of reinforcement. So it's rewarded and the negative aspects of hygiene have negative infographical messages or bad graphical messages of hygiene so it's punished. So basically that is called the psychological reinforcement of it. Okay, that's interesting. And the dancing is just normal dancing. Yeah, so we are trying to bring in the aspect of we've seen new songs coming on board like Kanyaga Laemi, others which they are so much common in the slums so we are trying to bring in that aspect. We are not trying to bring in something new. We are trying to bring in that aspect but now they would dance to the song we've created but with unique dancing styles but at the same time they have to practice the other five steps of hand washing as they dance. Okay, that's really nice. So I hear you have an event coming up. Can you tell us shortly about that event, what it's about? All right, that is true on the 18th of March 2021. We are having an event at St. Catherine's Primary School in Munkuru Slums. The event is dubbed Play for Hygiene and the event will bring up to eight primary schools together and the main theme of the event is to sensitize hygiene and sanitation. Within the community. So as my colleague has stated, our whole idea is to use play fun interactive ways to advance the hygiene narrative. So on that particular day we intend to have a lot of wide-ranging games, football, our board game that is surfing about, dances and many, many other games. So basically it's going to be a fun day but at the end of it all we are trying to pass across that message of hygiene. In that regard, we are raising funds for the same. We are crowdfunding and perhaps you can leave a link for the crowdfunding so that you can ask maybe your audience to support the same. But we are on course to raise some good amount of money to ensure that the event is successful because you want winners to get prizes, you want to award the hygienic schools or the champions of the games. So it's a good event that we are hoping that it's never happened in Kenya and we are hoping that being there first it's going to set the pace for other partners to join us to come on board to help us advance the whole idea of hygiene. Yes, especially for the students because that's where the main problem is. Okay, so maybe you can share with the audience where we can find you on your social media platforms where we can know more about the event that is upcoming. Yes, so we are on all social media handles and we are basically called at UHAI 365 in Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and all other social media handles. Okay, thank you so much. So that was Victor and Samuel from UHAI 365 such a good initiative that helps the society and also helps them and their living. So right about now we are going to take a short break but don't go anywhere because we will be back with more.