User:Ashybella/be bold

= Eunice Kilonzo = Eunice Kilonzo is an award-winning Kenyan journalist, writer and storyteller with close to a decade of health and science storytelling. She is notable for some of her compelling and memorable health stories across multiple media platforms that resonated with many Kenyans in her pursuit to objectively tell the story of the healthcare system in the country. Her work has been recognised locally, regionally and globally with nine journalism awards. She is also passionate about mentorship, and newer forms of storytelling and content creation.

Early Life
Eunice Kilonzo was born in Mombasa County to Jane Kilonzo, her mother, who is also a nurse and midwife, at a private hospital in the county. She was named after her maternal grandmother and her middle name, Kalunde, means small spear in the local Kamba dialect. She has a younger sister and several other siblings from her step mothers. Her interest in health storytelling began as a child where she told her mother that she would like to understand how the brain and heart works. However, by the age of 10, this dream changed after they lived in the hospital staff quarters, next to the casualty. She describes hearing people cry after losing loved one from accidents as heartbreaking as she thought doctors would also be overpowered. In addition, as an ardent news reader, she discovered that hospitals in the country were facing a myriad of challenges and she instead opted to become the president so that she could use her powers to empower doctors and improve health in the country. This was her driving motivation in her selecting political science as her first choice of study at the University of Nairobi. The choice for a university course, while in form three as a 17-year-old, however, felt like an uphill task as Eunice did not know anyone who had been to university and what this meant. Fortunately a career day at her high school, Star of the Sea High School, gave her a chance to meet some of the old girls in her school who had been to the university and encouraged them to work hard to make it to University in Nairobi.

Education
Eunice Kilonzo went to Star of the Sea High School and was one of the top five students in her 2007 class. She held several leadership roles and was a role model to other students. Eunice was always fascinated with words, stories and literature (both English and Kiswahili). She wrote some of the memorable compositions in her class that would, once in a while, be read to the others. She was also an art student - drawing, painting, and pottery - and if she was not in the art room, she was writing short stories. Her A- (minus) grade secured her a chance to join the University of Nairobi where she pursued a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science, Communications and Literature. For her third and fourth year, she double-majored in Political Science and Communications. She was the best student in her first year and was awarded a nine-month exchange programme at the University of Kalamazoo in the United States but she would not raise the necessary funds to pay for her flight and upkeep. As a second year student, Eunice applied and got an internship in 2011 at Koinonia Media Center where she was a communications intern and wrote content for News from Africa. Later in the year, she got a seven-month media internship at PATH, a global non-governmental organization that improves public health. While at PATH, she was part of a program called HIV-Free Generation where she managed the G-PANGE initiative. The experiences from the internship were critical in her final year at the University of Nairobi as they set her on a path to become a health storyteller. She graduated in 2013 with a second class upper division. She later, in 2018, did an Executive Certificate in Global Health Diplomacy at the Graduate Institute Geneve and is finalising her Masters in International Relations at the University of Nairobi. She also has a certicate in cutting-edge communications for research and policy (2017) from the On Think Tanks School and a postgraduate certificate in Solutions Journalism (2016) from the Rhodes University, South Africa.

Career
Eunice Kilonzo in 2020 joined Safaricom PLC as manager, Content Generation from the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP or UN Environment) where she was a writing and social media consultant for the Glowing Gone campaign. While at the UN agency, Eunice supported, through long-form writing, social media and multimedia storytelling, the Glowing Glowing Gone campaign that draws attention to coral fluorescence due to climate change. Prior to her consultancy at UNEP, she was a communications officer of a Pan-African research hub, the African Population and Health Research Center (APHRC). At the center, she developed and implemented the communications, public engagement, and media strategy for a continental specialised research-training programme, the Consortium for Advanced Research Training in Africa (CARTA). In addition to preparing and publishing strategic content and engagement materials, she conducted regional training of senior leadership, staff, researchers and scientists on effective media and communications techniques.

She honed her writing, photography, filming, interviewing and copy editing skills as a senior health reporter, for over four years, at the Nation Media Group, the largest media house in the region. She was part of and led a small niche team that produced compelling and memorable global science and health stories across multiple media platforms. From tales of Kenyans who face difficulties accessing emergency health services that has since been turned into a film, to promoting the health rights for people living with HIV and are disabled, to harm reduction efforts, and a 2019 landmark court ruling following a story she wrote about the costs of unsafe abortion due to lack of guidelines. She has pursued storytelling for niche science and health issues to over 18 countries. She provided health and science content for other Nation Media Group publications such as the Business Daily, The EastAfrican (a regional publication), The Citizen (Tanzania), and Africa Review. Her writings have also appeared in the Scientific African Magazine, French newspaper Le Monde; South African, Voices of Africa, and Women & Girls online site.

Awards
Eunice Kilonzo 's work has been recognised locally, regionally and globally with nine journalism awards.


 * 2019    Africa Media Network on Health (AMNH) Journalism Award Overall Winner (Print) by AMREF Africa/AMNH (Awarded in Rwanda)
 * 2017    ICT and Telecommunication Reporting Award (Print) by Media Council of Kenya (Awarded in Kenya)
 * 2017    Neglected Tropical Diseases Fellow, Geneva, Switzerland
 * 2016    Falling Walls Science Fellow, Berlin, Germany
 * 2016    Reproductive Health Winner (Print) by the International Planned Parenthood Federation (Awarded in Indonesia)
 * 2015    Journalism and Climate Change Fellowship, Paris, France by French Embassy and French Media Cooperation (CFIMedia)
 * 2015    Young Journalist (Print) of the Year award by Media Council of Kenya (Awarded in Kenya)
 * 2015    Data Journalism Winner, Zimeo “Excellence in Media” Awards by Africa Media Initiative (Awarded in South Africa)
 * 2015    Reproductive Health and Rights Winner by the Kenya Media Network on Population and Development (Awarded in Kenya)