Ekasi celebrates community heroes
The Ekasi podcast team are launching their second season, this time focusing on community heroes.
After the successful launch of their first season, the Ekasi team are back chatting to guests with the launch event for the new season taking place on 27 August 2021.
Throughout the nine episodes the Ekasi co-hosts Geofrey Njovu and Julian Mashingaidze, will be joined by guests rightfully dubbed as community heroes, people who have made a specific impact within their communities. The conversations will explore each hero’s leadership journey, the challenges they’ve faced along the way and the advice that they would give to others who want to make a difference within their own communities.
All the guests this season are Mastercard Foundation Scholars who are studying at universities around the world, such as Sciences Po, Arizona State University, American University of Beirut as well as a few from Edinburgh.
Reactions to season one
The team were overwhelmed by the response to their first season. Having started planning the podcast back in 2019 the first season was released just before Welcome Week last year. The team felt that being launched during the pandemic and lockdown helped to create a sense of community that was difficult to get in other ways.
Despite being nervous before the first launch, it was the first time anyone in the team had created a podcast, they were amazed by the response from the Edinburgh community.
About 45 minutes after the launch, I personally had a lot of messages pouring in which were essentially varying forms of the message 'Great work!', 'Interesting conversations' and 'Well done!'. So it was absolutely inspiring and somehow overwhelming because a lot of us didn’t expect it to be how it turned out.
We launched on the Friday, however our listenership hiked on Saturday and Sunday. I was surprised we had so many people listening, who were sharing and commenting on different social media. It felt so rewarding to see the positive reactions.
I think my sense of fulfilment came at the end of the season when we actually finished and made our 9th episode available and were able to look at the data and see all these number of downloads and listens. And also, just hearing feedback from my friends and the team members speaking about how much of a great experience that it had been for them.
About the Ekasi team
The Ekasi team is made up of 5 Mastercard Foundation Scholars from the University of Edinburgh: co-hosts Geofrey and Julian (who also serve as the Technical Director and Program manager respectively), Jesse Solomon (Podcast Coordinator), Blossom Kafumbata (Podcast Marketing Lead) and Christopher Kaumba (Podcast Data Analytics Lead).
The team of Scholars are responsible for planning the podcasts, finding and connecting with the guests, as well as producing, editing, and promoting the podcast. The team share some of the reasons they love being part of the Ekasi team:
For me it’s the actual conversations by far. It’s why I signed up to the team…The podcast is where you spare time and try to have a very focused conversation, with one or two other Scholars reflecting on their experience. Those are very inspiring moments. You get to know about different people and their stories. And then I do the editing, so I get to listen to them over and over again which is a very big bonus for me.
I think I have to agree with Geofrey, the best part is just the conversations, but I’d probably just increase that and say the general process especially for this second season. I honestly enjoyed making it, more than I did the first just because we had a lot more control and freedom over the process itself, coming up with the concept and then the idea and linking up with different universities and making the connection. That was all such a fun activity. To get introduced to your guests and then to finally meeting them and just talking. The whole process of building up with relationship and linking up with people is just fantastic.
The Ekasi Team is one of the best teams l have worked as part of so far. Never have l seen a group so well coordinated and harmonious in executing a goal we all deeply believe in: the power of storytelling. I have learnt a lot from my teammates and shared lots of laughter with them. Ekasi season 2 is our gift to the world to show how the youth can be agents of change in their communities. Will forever cherish the opportunity l had of working in the Ekasi Podcast Team.