We're halfway there..... ooh ooh!

Hello everyone!

I am so excited to share about our day today since it has certainly been one of our favorites so far! We got off to a great start with some wonderful pancakes that we enjoyed with either chocolate spread, syrup, or fresh mangoes! Then we hopped in our trusty bus, recently nicknamed Bart, and drove to East Legon to visit MEST Africa.

MEST Africa is a continent-wide program, established in 2008, that teaches tech and entrepreneurship skills to graduate-level students. Their reach does not end with education since they provide students with mentorship and support to develop businesses that could win between $50,000 and $100,000 of seed funding at the end of the intensive, year-long program. The company focuses on the values of generosity, positivity, and standards, which guide them like a GPS (get it? haha). They also believe that "talent is everywhere, opportunity is not," so this program is designed to help talent find opportunity.

The origin of the company highlights the pillar of generosity as Jorn Lysseggen, founder of Meltwater, funds the entire venture out of his company's pocket. This is a big commitment as the program is fully sponsored for participants and they accept 60 students every year. Jorn is passionate about this work and regularly visits the main site to visit with the staff and students. The goal is to eventually have the program be self sustaining through the 10% equity MEST receives from each company that is developed within their program.

While in the program, students start by learning basic business acumen and tech skills but quickly start collaborating and brainstorming ideas to solve problems in the area. The 60 students break off into self-selected teams of 2-4 people to come up with concepts and present at least 3 different business concepts to their teachers, the portfolio team, and Jorn Lysseggen to receive feedback and practice pitching their plan. By the end of the program, they choose their favorite concept and most compatible team to start building protoype software and compete for the seed investments. 

After asking many many questions, as we tend to do, we got to the most exciting part of the day - engaging with the MEST students. We connected right away over our shared interest in innovative business and our desire to learn. With 75 passionate, energetic, and curious students in one room, the energy was electric; I applaud our directors for eventually getting us to quiet down. We made a lot of great connections that will hopefully extend past LinkedIn. (We are tentatively planning to see some of these students on our beach day before we come home.)

After leaving MEST, with lots of new knowledge and energy, we got back on the bus and headed to a surprise lunch organized by our best friend and fierce protector, Officer Reginald! We were all thrilled when we pulled into a KFC. As I spent a lot of my childhood in Kentucky, it was lovely to feel a slice (or nugget??) of home.

After the fabulous lunch, we returned to our home base to catch up with the fellows in other parts of the world. It was great to see some familiar faces as many of us have struggled connecting to wifi or cellular data long enough to facetime friends and family at home. The fellows asked us questions about our trip and we were surprised by the informed answers we were able to give them about the country we have only been exploring for ten days.

We ended the day with a delicious dinner of jollof and being fitted for our own Ghanaian outfits! This was quite an adventure as many of us were a little indecisive on what style we wanted (I am sure this will not come as a surprise to many who know us). After putting our problem-solving and teamwork skills to use, we all chose unique and fun designs for our garments and can't wait to see how they turn out. Be sure to ask your favorite fellow for more details about today's excursion, because there was so much interesting information I could not fit in this post. 

Would love to send some of our heat back, but will settle with sending good vibes. Have a great evening:)

- Georgina