Dr. Odede, Founder and CEO of Shining Hope for Communities (SHOFCO)

Dr. Odede, Founder and CEO of Shining Hope for Communities (SHOFCO) has been  named the Schwab Foundation “Social Innovator of the Year, 2022.”

“I’m honoured to join world leaders in Davos 2022. This year’s theme which is ‘Working Together to Regain Trust’ comes at a time when we are pushing for the decolonisation of the aid system. What other place best to discuss this if not in Davos?” Odede said.

He will receive his award at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland next week. SHOFCO also won the UN-Habitat Scroll of Honour 2021 award.

The forum will feature heads of state and government, global CEOs and other leaders. They will discuss the critical challenges facing the world today and present their ideas on how to address them.

Dr Odede will be speaking at the 2022 World Economic Forum alongside world leaders such as India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi; António Guterres, Secretary-General, United Nations.

Others set to attend the forum include Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Director-General, World Trade Organization (WTO); Naftali Bennett, Prime Minister of Israel and Xi Jinping, President of the People’s Republic of China, Marc Benioff CEO & Founder of Salesforce, and other global leaders.

Dr Odede In March 2021 launched the World Communities Forum in Nairobi that brought together top leaders across the globe, with the goal of giving a platform to poor communities to articulate their issues. The forum, according to the Social Entrepreneur was informed by a gap he saw while attending the 2020 World Economic Forum, where poor communities were not represented in the forum.

“We need to bring more local leaders to the table. I want to see Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) being discussed in the slums. That is why we launched Global Alliance for Communities that brings together leaders across the globe who are working to better the lives of poor people, especially in slums,” he said.

The World Economic Forum is an annual convening that seeks to bring the world’s most powerful decision-makers together on a regular basis to discuss the pressing problems of the day and consider how best to address them.