Our Youngest Team Member 

Sameeran Das, a senior in high school, started as a volunteer and is now research and program assistant at the Power of Love Foundation. Ever since his first trip in 2014, he has been assisting the staff in the field for the past five summers. While working closely with the Pediatric HIV Care Program/PMTCT, Microfinance Program for Women, as well as the LLIN mosquito net/malaria project, Sameeran has made significant contributions in each area.

Most recently, Sameeran has focused on strengthening the Microfinance program, collecting data and conducting meetings with female entrepreneurs. He organized group discussions with twenty new business owners from the Microfinance program. The conversation focused on suggestions for improving our program, strategies for strengthening businesses, and challenges faced by new business owners. In addition, he had in-depth discussions with successful business mentors who assist new loan recipients, to get their feedback. Based on responses from these two groups, Sameeran developed an innovation for this program. Sameeran's innovation is to add an “internship” module to the current business training modules to train loan applicants with hands-on experience. By assigning a loan applicant to work under an successful business owner from the microfinance program, we hope to further empower female entrepreneurs in Matero and create a network of businesswomen who can collaborate together in the future.                                        

Sameeran will graduate from high school in 2019 and continue his work with Power of Love during his years in college and beyond.