I am a young South African woman with a tenacious spirit, a resilient mind and a proactive attitude! I received admission at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service (SFS), which is the #1 ranked graduate school for international programs in the world! My graduate school admission was coupled with a 50% tuition merit scholarship to join the Global Human Development (GHD) program offered under SFS. The intention of this GoFundMe is to raise  funds to cover the remaining cost of tuition and graduate school expenses. This is a full circle moment for me because I was once told that I wouldn't measure up to the profile of a Georgetown student. Nonetheless, I pressed forward and did not allow the naysayers to deter me from pursuing my dreams! I applied to the GHD program with the belief that complex development challenges can be addressed through innovative and practical solutions. Growing up in a South African township gave me intimate insights into the psychosocial and economic issues that burden underserved communities. However, the valiant efforts of donor funded organizations brought innovative tools that transformed and strengthened households in my community. To this day, I am encouraged by the can-do approach and lifelong engagement that development organizations have undertaken not only in my community, but in thousands across the globe. It is through international developmental organizations that people in collapsed economies such as Zimbabwe first learn about block chain technology alternatives, or young social entrepreneurs in Nigeria get introduced to venture labs through impact investing, or young women in high HIV-1 burden settings in South Africa first learn about PrEP. 
I, myself am a product of meaningful investment in human development initiatives; which empowered me as a young girl from a South African township to transition from a beneficiary to a high- preforming development professional. I have held tri-sector internships and worked at the intersection of global health, technology and supply chain management.  My international work experience extended to an opportunity at John Snow Inc., where I was hired as a Program Coordinator and later earned a promotion to Program Officer on the USAID | DELIVER Project. In this role, I successfully forwarded healthcare commodities to support malaria programs in 24 countries across Sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia. I quickly developed a cross-cultural fluency necessary to ensure the secure transshipment and delivery of malaria medicines to global communities ranging from Yangon, Myanmar to Kampala, Uganda. In this role, I vastly improved my employer’s ability to forecast thorough freight and financial information to the President’s Malaria Initiative (PMI). I also saw myself excel in high pressured situations, which included overseeing the emergency shipment of healthcare commodities to Liberia during the Ebola outbreak. My responsibilities challenged me to think creatively about how health systems can be strengthened to provide the best value to clients; creativity that is evident in the work of social ventures that use drone technology or maritime robots to deliver medicines to remote areas. The GHD program offers an opportunity to further explore and participate in this kind of work through the summer field project requirement.
Apart from work, in 2016 I partnered with a software developer and launched a mobile application aimed at promoting dialogue on the importance of consent, safe sex and STI testing. The app amassed 3,000 users from across South America, USA and Africa. Some of our users first learned that the Zika virus could be sexually transmitted through our app notifications, and a popular South African magazine: DRUM, did a double page spread entitled “Sex Education at your Fingertips” to profile the app. My co- creator and I are now building a second iteration of the app. We are using feedback from interactive workshops that we held to introduce new and fun features for our target users. This is the kind of innovation that PEPFAR projects/programs can use in the field on HIV-prevention campaigns, or an innovation that universities can use as part of programs that promote a culture of consent on college campuses. The GHD Social Enterprise and Innovation Fellows Program would be a great space to collect additional feedback from peers, and learn about tools that can help to scale-up visibility of this mobile application. I also volunteer and recently started teaching young Africans about the fundamentals and applications of blockchain  technology!
I have a continuum of experience which will add to the diversity of students in the GHD program! Your donations will ensure that I join the Fall 2018 cohort, and continue to grow as a development professional! Let's keep the momentum going and make MY Hoya Dream A Reality! Thank you for your donations and please help to spread the word!