- May 18, 2022
- Posted by: Web Master
- Category: Students Profiles
Modesta Joseph is a Mastercard Foundation scholar at African Leadership University in Rwanda majoring in International Business and Trade. Modesta is the founder of Our Voices Against Harassment (OVAH) a non-profit based in Tanzania dedicated to tackling sexual harassment and establishing a gender-just and violence-free nation. Modesta founded OVAH back in 2015 when it was known as OurCries Initiative with the aim of fighting student harassment in public transit from bus operators. In 2019, she revamped the organization to tacklethe prominent issue of sexual abuse and sexual harassment that many girls and young women face in their communities.
Modesta also worked as an IT Administrator at Apps and Girls, where she was able to co-create two of the company’s most well-known online platforms from the ground up (codegalaxy and Tigo e-schools). She also oversaw the completion of the tigo e-school project, with 100 teachers registered on the platform. In terms of mentoring, modesta has been able to mentor many girls, and as a result, they have been able to start their own businesses, take advantage of various opportunities, including education scholarships, and keep the apps and girls flags flying high!!
As part of her journey, In 2015, Modesta was selected as one of Tanzania’s delegates to attend the global prestigious startup and tech event SLUSH in Finland. She has been recognized as a 2017 We Are Family Foundation Global Teen Leader and a 2018 Africa Young Leader Fellow. In 2017, she was a part of the Tanzanian Robotics Team, and went on to represent Tanzania in FIRST Robotics Challenge in Washington D.C. In 2018, Modesta attended a LaunchX Summer Program at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) where she co-founded a startup called Notitia to make training data more accessible by
crowd-sourcing data from the public.
Modesta is currently communications and fundraising officer at Apps and Girls. She is passionate about social change, gender equality, women empowerment, entrepreneurship, technology, and education.