Four Aalto University students visited Zambia to work on a case for a local startup, together with students from Zambia, Kenya, and Uganda. They started their voyage with high expectations, but none of them could anticipate the most important lessons they'd learn.
Aaro and Isaac are a young gay couple from Helsinki studying at the school of Business at Aalto University, who turned their experiences of alienation into a strength. They started Giggeli, a company that makes penis-shaped candles and soaps, to spread joy and raise awareness on the issues of the sexualization of genitalia.
The fear of not being accepted: we think it's a fear everyone faces when going to new places. LGBTQ+ people, however, need to face it every day. In every interaction, they must decide: do I feel comfortable showing who I really am? At GAYY, we would like to add a queer touch to Otaniemi and let the minorities also enjoy the community that we have.
Africa is a mobile-first market. A small group of us from AVP recently visited East Africa to learn about the startup ecosystems and opportunities in Kenya, Tanzania, and Rwanda. In this post, our co-director Kalle Airo shares some of his observations and learnings from the visit.
Koor is a Somali word referring to a bell attached to a camel — the number one livestock in the country. If a farmer is missing a camel, they can find it by the warning of the bell. Likewise, Solve the SDGs winner, team Koor, hopes their solution could give a warning to farmers in the Horn of Africa about incoming droughts.
S.U.R. is a decolonizing collective based on the understanding of the Global South not just as geography but as a way of standing, experiencing, and dancing through the world. Amy Gelera, one of the founding members, shares the story of how entrepreneurship, underrepresentation, and pasta created a movement.