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Wesley Owiti (born 6 September 1988) is the co-founder and CEO of Cherehani Africa, a social enterprise in Kenya that offers training on tailoring /fashion business, leadership, entrepreneurship and financial knowledge to the less fortunate women in the rural areas and on completion of their training provides sewing machines to enable them start and run successful fashion businesses and become sustain-ably independent in their income generation.
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Early life
He was born on 6 September 1988 in Kisumu. He is the son of James Owiti Okoth and Benter Nyapuoch. His father was a descendant of the Koketch lineage who settled in Komenya village, Rarieda Constituency in Siaya County. With minimal formal education, his father worked as a type writer and later worked with local N.G.Os like CARE and Wedco before retirement. His mother was the daughter of Achieng Onam of Kadinga Village, Seme District, Kisumu Rural Constituency in Kisumu County - she served as a primary school teacher, rising to the rank of deputy head teacher and finally head teacher.
Education
He attended St. Judes Nursery School in Kisumu and joined Arya Primary School. He scored an A grade that propelled him to join Maseno School. He sat his Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (K.C.S.E) in 2006 scoring an A-, this qualified him to join the university as a government sponsored student. In 2008, he joined the University of Nairobi to pursue a Bachelors of Commerce degree (B Com) and graduated in 2012. Wesley went back to the same university in 2012, to pursue a Master of Arts in Project Planning and Management.
Career
In 2007, after just clearing high school, he was recruited at KEMRI to work as a Community Mobilizer and Enumerator for the IEIP program. He was in-charge of recruiting mothers in the local community of Asembo Location, Siaya County to embrace the Zinc Research Program that was to test the impact of zinc in ending diarrhea in children. He was retained in the project as an enumerator up until 2009.
In 2012, he ventured into self-employment, starting with a marketing consulting company. The company failed terribly and refused to pick.
He later partnered with his former school mate, Robert Mboya to start their first event management firm, Bowtie Events. This was relatively exciting since all players they brought on board had an interest in fashion as well as events. Bowtie Events would lead to the birth of Cherehani Africa in 2014.
In 2014, he co-founded Cherehani Africa with Robert Mboya and Nasreen Ali. ‘Cherehani’ is a Swahili word for a sewing machine. Cherehani Africa Initiative facilitates training on tailoring /fashion business, leadership, entrepreneurship and financial knowledge to the less fortunate women in the rural areas and on completion of their training provides sewing machines to enable them start and run successful fashion businesses and become sustain-ably independent in their income generation.
In 2014 he was awarded among the Top 40 Men Under 40 in Kenya by the East Africa Business Daily.
Interviews
In 2014, he appeared in the Business daily newspaper to talk about how Cherehani Africa is impacting the lives of less fortunate women in Siaya County where it all began.
He appeared in AM Live breakfast show in 2015 with his fellow co-founder Mr. Robert Mboya to explain that his motivation to start Cherehani Africa was as a result of their pursuit to eradicate poverty in Africa through fashion.