TEDxEustonSalon 2015 - Facing Forward: Harnessing Energy has arrived!
If you have not already purchased your ticket, it’s now too late as we are sold out!
The TEDxEuston Team, in collaboration with Shell, our principal partner, is incredibly excited to meet you all and look forward to continuing the conversations we started last year.
You will find us on the lower ground floor of the Crowne Plaza – City hotel, in Blackfriars in the Conference Centre.
Registration opens at 5.30pm, and if you’ve attended a TEDxEuston event before, you know you do not want to miss the start.
As always, there will be our trademark goodie bags provided courtesy of Shell filled with keepsakes.
In true TEDxEuston fashion, no event is complete without our networking AfterParty. After the talks make sure you take a moment to talk to like-minded TEDx-ers you have never met before and shake a leg to the tunes played by our DJ for the night - DJ Josiah, winner of 2014's International Music Conference, Best New Producer Award.
Our TEDxEustonSalon speakers – Andrew Hunt, Eunice Ball and Olasimbo Sojinrin are ready to share their stories and ideas with you. Richard ‘Rich BLK’ Mkoloma is ready to energise you. The TEDxEuston Team is ready to welcome you! We hope you’re prepared for what we promise will be an incredible evening.
Introducing Richard ‘Rich Blk’ Mkoloma: the creative polymath.
TEDxEustonSalon would not be complete without a dynamic, atmospheric performer. Spoken Word artist Rich Blk blends the energy in Hip Hop, Afro-Electronica and Poetry with a lyrical finesse that covers matters of today and ideas of ‘tomorrow’.
Rich’s poetry has been published in ‘Contemporary Black Writing’ anthologies by Peepal Press and Penguin. He has featured on SKY, OHTV, Channel 4 and BBC Radio 1Xtra as well as performed in numerous venues in London including Sadler’s Wells, Jazz Café, and the Africa Centre. We can’t wait for him to grace the TEDxEustonSalon stage on Saturday, and quite simply rhythmically blow you away.
Follow him on twitter @richblkthinks and our incredible speakers @MisterAduna, @africatbn and @Solar_Sister.
Our third and final speaker at TEDxEustonSalon next Saturday is a feminist, a citizen lobbyist, and an advocate for climate change progress and women’s rights in Africa. Olasimbo Sojinrin is passionate about women-focused renewable energy access and is ready to inspire you to be too!
Olasimbo has been working in the realm of climate change and renewable energy for over 10 years. She joined the British Council in 2004 as a Project Manager where she managed several partnerships that strove to educate secondary school students on the issue of climate change. From there she became the Capacity Development Manager to the UNDP’s Access to Renewable Energy Project in 2011 providing a strong voice in the drive to create climate change legislation.
Currently she is the Nigeria Country Manager for Solar Sister, a civil society organisation with a mission to eradicate energy poverty through women's economic empowerment. Olasimbo leads a network of women entrepreneurs who are bringing affordable clean energy solutions to their communities’ doorstep.
Join us next Saturday at TEDxEustonSalon as she explores harnessing the potential energy of the Continent and seeks to empower us all.
“I was ready to fight, I was ready to die”. That is the passion to which a previous TEDxEuston speaker has used to tell us her efforts to aid health improvement in Africa.
Health, unsurprisingly, has been an important issue on the TEDxEuston stage over the years. Ater all, good health is not only an outcome of, but also a foundation for, development. So why then do we find in so many parts of Sub-Saharan Africa that despite reasonable economic development, health improvement is poorer than expected?
I will give you a single fact just to put things into perspective: Sub-Saharan Africa accounts for 49 per cent of maternal deaths, 50 per cent of under-five child deaths and 67 per cent of HIV/AIDS cases.
So here is some insight about what is crucial for the improvement of health outcomes in Africa:
Fadekemi Akinfaderin-Agarau identified social stigma and a lack of openness with sexual health as factors that contribute to the further spread of HIV/AIDS. She told us how she “Found her Calling” through a focus on empowering the youth to change policies, and challenge social norms.
To empower is to create an opportunity for health improvement. In a talk entitled “Empowered women will change our world”, Fatima B Muhammad shows us that gender inequalities form the pinnacle of poor maternal health outcomes in Northern Nigeria.
The provision of education through the distribution of health information, as well as enabling community support, allows access to essential care.
In a talk entitled “Our struggle is not over”, Vuyiseka Dubula identifies it is those that are poorest that face most difficulties in accessing essential care. She successfully challenged the World’s leading pharmaceutical companies to make life-saving HIV treatments more affordable.
"Our struggle is not over" - Vuyiseka Dubula
Following a personal experience with healthcare in Nigeria Toyin Saraki, the self-described “unlikely activist”, finds a lack of resources is an important limit to the provision of care, and inspired the creation of The Wellbeing Foundation in Nigeria, aiming to improve maternal and child health outcomes.
Challenging social ideas, improving education, reducing poverty, and the provision of resources will aid the improvement of health in Africa - if only it were that simple to implement these things!
These are just a few of the stories from those instrumental to healthcare improvements in the continent, and there are surely many more that are yet to grace the TEDxEuston stage – so watch this space!
In the meantime, please do listen to the passionate, thought-provoking talks mentioned above, as well as our many others. You will find more thought-provoking ideas and discussion at the TEDxEustonSalon later on this month and our main event in December. Hope to see you there!
- Zainab Sanusi is a Junior Doctor, currently working in Dartford, Kent. She is one of the newest members on the committee, having previously been a volunteer.
Africa's population of one billion plus is adopting technology at an unprecedented rate. Thus, harnessing energy
becomes the crux of the matter, propelling us to think broader and quickly. One of the
greatest gifts the continent has is an abundance of natural resources and more
importantly, the ability to harness our own skill-sets to solve our own
problems.
Our second Salon speaker, Eunice Baguma Ball understands this well and makes this her
business. Eunice is an
entrepreneur & technology business consultant who has worked in the technology sector in Africa for over 7 years. Currently based in the UK and as the founder/organiser of the Africa Technology Business Network, she advises tech
startups that are looking to expand into Africa or developing solutions
targeting the African market.
The ATBN gathers a community of entrepreneurs, innovators and technologists who
are interested, in not only in tapping into the opportunities in Africa, but also creating
social and economic impact.Through
organised events in London, the ATBN initiative provides insights into the
Africa technology industry and connects UK-based entrepreneurs & investors to
opportunities in the sector. Moreover, they support the budding local
tech communities across Africa by providing a plug into the UK tech ecosystem
and a platform to showcase African centred innovations to a global
audience.
We invite you to hear Eunice’s talk
at the next TEDxEuston Summer Salon on Saturday 13th June. Her
enthusiasm is infectious and will motivate you to reflect on Africa’s budding
tech scene, potential to develop exponentially and make a real impact on Africa’s
ability to face forward and harness their energy.
Emeka
Okafor challenges TEDxEuston to change the world.
At
TEDxEuston in 2013, leading African blogger and entrepreneur Emeka Okafor urged
Africans to challenge the status quo. In his TEDxEuston talk
entitled, ‘The Crazy Ones’ Emeka – creator of Timbuktu
Chronicles and Africa
Unchained alluded to the 1997 Apple “Think Differently” advertising
campaign, and reminded us that it is often the ‘misfits’ and the crazy ones who
are the people that change the world.
Emeka
Okafor shared with the audience how as director of TED Global in Arusha,
Tanzania in 2007, he noticed how everyone at that event had a new and unique
way of thinking for Africa. They all shared ‘the DNA of getting
things done’, he said. And he encouraged the TEDxEuston audience to
do the same.
Emeka
claims that the people who start tinkering are often the ones who soon develop
the prototypes. In ‘The Crazy Ones’ talk, at TEDxEuston’s Ripple
Effect-themed conference, Emeka alluded to one young boy who displayed at Maker Faire
Africa his own creation of taking discarded syringes and
created excavator toys. Here’s more about this young inventor’s
story here:
Emeka
encourages us all to be part of the ‘problem-solving society’. He
says that there needs to be a space, an environment where like-minded
innovators, doers and problem-solvers can come together and encourage one
another.
We
at TEDxEuston couldn’t agree more. So we want to encourage you to do
two things:
2) Join
us at TEDxEuston Salon on 13 June. More about it here and purchase a ticket here
You’ll
be sure to find like-minded creators, innovators and problem-solvers who are
determined to birth solutions, develop clear visions and create new concepts
which can only harness the strength and potency of Africa. In short – at
TEDxEuston Salon you’ll most likely find the crazy ones, the misfits, the ones
who are likely to change the world – for better!
Ever heard of superfood Baobab? If you attended our last event in December, perhaps you were lucky enough to find an energy bar made from African superfood Baobab in your gift bag. Whether you’ve heard of it or not, you’re in for a treat next month at TEDxEuston Salon. One of our speakers is Andrew Hunt – co-founder of Aduna, a company which makes an incredible energy-packed Baobab bar. Baobab – a fruit from trees found in Senegal and Gambia - looks set to take off as the next great superfoods, and for very good reason as it’s packed with incredible nutrients. Aduna is an African inspired health and beauty brand and social business that aims to create a demand for natural food products from involving small local communities in rural West Africa. Their superfoods Baobab sourced from the fruit of the "Tree of life" and Moringa are natural products sourced from Gambia and Senegal, are the top selling superfoods in Planet Organic, Holland & Barrett and Wholefoods stores. We invite you to hear Andrew talk about the potential and power of marketing natural superfoods as high end luxury products. Come and find out how he moved from having a successful advertising career in the UK to a Wolof speaking, African luxury food product enthusiast! Book your tickets here
