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My name is Jackline Njeri. I have worked in the plastic recycling sector for three and a half years with my professional experience being project and operations management.

During my time in this sphere, I have become conversant with taking a user-centered approach to effectively design and deliver innovative projects, develop customer satisfaction programs, and improve business performance by initiating new/relevant operational procedures.

Before joining the project management field, I consulted in the Impact Assessment and Audit field, through which I worked with various businesses to outline their business activities’ social and environmental impact.

I believe great things are achieved when user-centered and systems thinking approaches to business activities are taken and that it is through the right mix of talent and resources that success is attained. With this principle, I have utilized my creativity and expertise to develop programs that steer organizations toward their goals.

I first interacted with the systems thinking concept when I found an introductory course at acumen academy.

By the time I completed it, I was curious to learn more to grow my expertise in the field. In my pursuit, I came across SAYDs and made an application that successfully went through. SAYDs fellowship combines learning in theory and context approaches that have further deepened my understanding of social problems.

The theoretical part covers learning in three toolkits:

The complexity analysis toolkit takes the learner through the journey of identifying a complex issue/system, dissecting the social/complex problem by mapping out key components that are responsible for the existence of the problem, reviewing the form of interactions and interconnections that exist within/between the components that contribute to its persistence.

The Systemic intervention toolkit has allowed me to make sense of learnings from the complexity analysis toolkit by utilizing information from the complexity analysis toolkit to develop frameworks for intervention by taking into account stakeholder needs and interests to define points of intervention further.

Systemic Policy strategy allowed me to utilize systemic thinking in policy making.

The Practical part combines real-life interactions through which sessions are facilitated with groups/individuals covering a similarly complex problem. Through a combination of these two learning approaches, I have learned how to effectively coordinate and facilitate activities centred around the facilitation/dissemination of systems thinking knowledge and internalize learnings from the theoretical part.

I look forward to finalizing this fellowship and joining the SAYDs Community Association, which provides a platform for interacting with other like-minded youth to define the basis of tackling social issues through systems thinking.

I am confident that through this course, I will utilize the skills gained to further push the agenda of systemic interventions through modelling the systemic approach and facilitating other like-minded youth to join in the pursuit of better approaches to complex social issues.