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The retired Miami Heat legend, whose No. 3 jersey hangs in the rafters at the Kaseya Center, was back in town for a good cause that had nothing to do with basketball.

Wade was on stage at the Edition hotel at the Elevate Prize Foundation’s second annual Make Good Famous Summit. The NBA icon was honored for his advocacy for the transgender community and using his influence to ignite social change.

For Women’s History month in 2023, we asked our Elevate community to nominate incredible organizations working to end period poverty for our Elevate Prize GET LOUD Award. The result? We received 5,926 nominations on Instagram – at the time, our largest number of nominations!

According to the World Bank, an estimated 500 million women lack access to menstrual products and adequate facilities for menstrual hygiene management.  The need is urgent. 

The winner was Drawing Dreams Initiative, a grassroots organization based in Kenya on a mission to drive menstrual equity, health, and education.

We were inspired by the organization’s approach, focusing on practical support AND systemic change in a country where as many as 65% of women and girls cannot afford menstruation products. A year after they were named as the winner, we were excited to catch up with Drawing Dreams and learn more about how their impact is growing.

According to Drawing Dreams’ founder, Grace Wanene, the award ushered in a year of scale and perspective. “When someone truly believes in you, it validates your work and its impact.” 

In 2023, the organization provided over 50,000 sustainable period products to people in need, and grew from just a few school partnerships to 16 – with an impact that reaches out beyond the classroom. “When we adopt a school, we adopt the entire community,” Grace told Elevate, highlighting programs that break taboos around menstrual and reproductive health, are changing mindsets, and even impacting conversations on a national and governmental level.

“Period poverty is a silent pandemic,” Grace noted. “It is not only the lack of period products, but unmet needs, infrastructure, and support for girls.” Grace went on to explain that women and girls often have to ask questions like:  ‘How safe are these toilets?’ ‘Will I have someone follow me?’ ‘Do I have access to water?’ 

Last May, Drawing Dreams hosted the first-ever Menstrual Equity Summit in Kenya, bringing together 125 delegates from across East Africa who shared best practices and lessons with each other. “We had policy makers, fellow community-based organizations, NGOs, and individuals who are passionate about menstrual health,” says Grace. “Some of our teachers were there, some of our beneficiaries, especially teenage mothers…and even our county Governor was there.” Based on this success, the organization hopes to host another summit in 2024.

While tireless leaders like Grace are driving change every day, there is so much work to be done. It’s going to take the kind of systemic change that comes from collective action, where we ALL have a role to play. At Elevate, we’re proud to be a small part of the solution. 

What YOU can do today to help!

Support Drawing Dreams.

Learn more about period poverty around the world.  

Live in the U.S.? Take action today to abolish tampon tax.

Join the conversation. 

We can’t think of anything that represents Women’s History Month better than women changemakers dedicated to championing and lifting up other women. 

That’s exactly what two of our Elevate Prize winners have dedicated their lives to and are working towards on a daily basis: 2023 winner Teresa Njoroge, founder and CEO of Clean Start Africa, and 2024 winner, Sonya Passi, founder and CEO of FreeFrom.

Teresa and Sonya are leading organizations that not only focus on women’s rights, but are driving real progress towards gender equity and safety. What’s more, both organizations share a belief that change should be community-based AND systemic.

Clean Start Africa works with women and children in Kenya whose lives have been impacted by the prison system, offering opportunities for reintegration.  

 “Our direct beneficiaries are the women, girls, and children who have been impacted by the criminal justice system,” Teresa told us. “They’re in [prisons] purely because they’re poor and marginalized… [We] have to work and reform the criminal justice system, because if we don’t, then it continues to channel these vulnerable and poor women over and over again.” Re-framing what justice could be  – and should be – is central to Clean Start Africa’s strategy.

Similarly, FreeFrom is focused on supporting survivors of intimate partner violence and reframing  how we, as a society, think about it, so that rather than being seen as a product of bad luck or bad choices, it’s treated as the systemic issue that it is. 

“The number one obstacle of survivor safety is financial insecurity,” says Sonya. “In other words, intimate partner violence is a structural economic issue with both economic causes and economic consequences…Our work is based on the premise that we can’t end gender-based violence unless survivors can afford to heal and rebuild their lives.”

Teresa and Sonya both bring profound lived experiences to their work. Teresa, having been falsely accused and imprisoned, intimately understands the injustices faced by women within the criminal justice system. This firsthand experience drives her mission at Clean Start Africa. Sonya, meanwhile, has been a dedicated anti-violence activist since she was a teenager. Her long-standing commitment suggests a deep-seated drive to address and end gender-based violence. Both women leverage their unique backgrounds to forge meaningful, systemic solutions.. 

“We have to build a truly survivor-centered and inclusive movement—one that welcomes and works for all survivors by starting with and centering our own communities in the design of policies, programs, and resources,” Sonya notes. 

By drawing from their own lived experiences, and deep-rooted partnership with their communities to fuel policy change, both organizations are tackling the symptoms and the causes of inequality – and making the world a safer place to be – for women, for girls, and for everyone.

At Elevate, we’re proud to work with and learn from them–—this Women’s History Month and beyond.  

“I never dreamed that this would be possible!”

That’s what 2024 Elevate Prize winner, Melissa Malzkuhn, Director of Motion Light Lab, an organization advancing sign language fluency and equity through immersive content, said to us as she saw her face on a Times Square billboard announcing our new cohort of winners. 

At Elevate, we believe that changemakers and the good they ignite deserve the same recognition as those traditionally in the spotlight – and few pieces of real estate represent the spotlight like Times Square.  That’s why, to announce our 2024 Elevate Prize winners, we put them on a billboard soaring high above the bustle of Broadway for everyone to see and celebrate the great work that they do. The epitome of Make Good Famous!

 “It’s an amazing experience to see a Deaf person represented in Times Square,” Melissa told us. “It really means a lot. I want the world to understand that our community has so much to contribute in so many different ways. We’re so rich in our cultural history and we want to share that. To be visible is really inspiring.”

“Make Good Famous means making good people famous, and that includes people who are impacted by the justice system,” said Daniel Forkkio, CEO of Represent Justice, an organization using the power of the media to reimagine the justice system. “We are bringing thousands and hopefully millions of people to the stories of people who have suffered incredible things but are also living incredibly resilient, successful lives, and doing their best to change the system every single day.  Hopefully, we’re humanizing those people and other people who are impacted by the system as well.”

Even winners who weren’t able to be there in-person were proud of this moment of important visibility for their work. “Can’t say I ever expected to see [EarthEnable]‘s logo on a Times Square billboard!,” wrote winner Gayatri Datar, co-founder and CEO of EarthEnable, an organization developing natural building materials to create healthy and sustainable homes in rural Africa.  

“I share this with firm belief that entrepreneurs, changemakers, community problem fixers, social leaders [and] designers of our future deserve to be on the same platforms as other superstars like actors and athletes,” said Mpindi Abaas, CEO of Media Challenge Initiative, inspiring the next generation of journalists in Africa. “We must #MakeGoodFamous in any way we can, so that the next generation can find a better world and also have a lot of great and uplifting content to consume.”

Visibility matters. Representation matters. And who shares the spotlight matters. 

It is always an honor to shout our Elevate Prize winners’ achievements from the rooftops – and we’re thrilled that this time, we got to do that literally!