Kenyan Nelly Cheboi has emerged CNN’s Hero of the year for 2022. The founder of TechLit Africa, a non-profit that provides students across rural Kenya with access to donated, upcycled computers, beat ten other heroes to cart away the much coveted prize at an event held at the American Museum of Natural History on Sunday, December 11, 2022.
Nelly was selected by online voters from among this year’s Top 10 CNN Heroes at the event hosted by American broadcaster, Anderson Cooper and actress, Kelly Ripa. It was an emotional moment as she received the award with her mother who she said, “worked really hard to educate us.”
As CNN Hero of the Year, Cheboi will receive $100,000 to expand her work. She and the other top 10 CNN Heroes honored at Sunday’s gala all receive a $10,000 cash award and, for the first time, additional grants, organizational training and support from The Elevate Prize Foundation through a new collaboration with CNN Heroes. Nelly will also be named an Elevate Prize winner, which comes with a $300,000 grant and additional support worth $200,000 for her nonprofit.
29-year old Nelly Cheboi grew up in poverty in Mogotio, a rural township in Kenya but got a full scholarship to study computer science at Augustana College in Illinois. When she started working in the software industry, she realized the extent of which computers were being thrown away as companies upgraded their technology infrastructure. So she started bringing back refurbished computers and donated computers back to Kenya.
In 2019, She and a fellow software engineer quit their lucrative jobs in America to start TechLit Africa (short for Technologically Literate) in Kenya.
TechLit Africa currently has 4,000 students from 10 schools across rural Kenya. It is selecting our next 100 schools in Kenya, to prepare an additional 40,000 students.
According to Nelly, “My hope is that when the first TechLit kids graduate high school, they’re able to get a job online because they will know how to code, they will know how to do graphic design, they will know how to do marketing,” Cheboi said. “The world is your oyster when you are educated. By bringing the resources, by bringing these skills, we are opening up the world to them.”
Other CNN heroes include Carie Broecker, Richard Casper, Nora El-Khouri Spencer, Tyrique Glasgow, Teresa Gray, Meymuna Hussein-Cattan, Aidan Reilly, Debra Vines, and Bobby Wilson.
