Mesret
Mesret’s Story
Mesret’s number one goal is “to change people’s lives.” An internship with an Austin-based nonprofit, Well Aware, enabled Mesret to use her engineering talent and passion to assist with community water education. Well Aware provides innovative water solutions to East Africa and is already helping her attain her life goal of changing people’s lives. Mesret is now working full-time for Well Aware as a Water and Environmental Engineer.
Raised by a single mom with three other siblings, Mesret had little support for her education. Her family would grow crops like maize and beans around their home and collect rain water to reduce expenses. Mesret’s mother would even collect firewood in the wild at risk of predators to sell. This was an extremely difficult time for Mesret, but she is inspired by her scholarship through GLOW to achieve her goals and support her family and community.
During COVID, Mesret has used her skills and knowledge to inform her community on the necessity of thoroughly washing their hands to prevent infection. She has further supported her community by building a proper washing station in order to promote health and stop the spread of the COVID-19 virus.
Mesret is from Marsabit County, a marginalized semi-arid region of northern Kenya with a scarcity of water and resources. Growing up, she witnessed the hardship of collecting water, carrying 20-liter jugs on her back daily for up to eight miles back and forth until an organization provided donkeys to help transport the water.
“Especially in African culture, they believe that girls are supposed to just be at home, do the housework, not to go to school, but that is wrong. We should be like the boys, who go to school, gets the salary, and become someone important in society. Girls who are left at home, they have great minds. It’s not that they are not capable of doing something. It’s only that they don’t get the opportunity to do that. If they are given the opportunity, I know that they can do great, great things to change the whole world.”
Mesret using the hand-washing station she created