People have always wanted to know what I do professionally aside from the politics and activism. So I will give a brief background that I hope might help understand the conversation we are about to have for some days. I hope in some ways it inspires some of you.

So in brief, I was born in 1992 in Blantyre. I spent the most part of my childhood mostly in Mzuzu. From St Peter's Primary, i went to Phwezi Boys Secondary. I was selected to COM in 2010. Graduated with Bachelor's of Medical Laboratory Sciences in 2016.

While in College I was the President of COM AIDS Counseling and Training Society(COMACTS) from 2013 to 2016. In 2015, we had a 2.5 million Kwacha project funded by NAC. We were going around secondary schools with comprehensive sexuality education campaigns.

While at Mulanje secondary, I met a young boy who was born with HIV. Following my presentation, he wanted to open up to me. He told me that the ARVs he was taking made him anxious and several times he contemplated suicide.

When, he told me this, the school bus was about leave. So I wrote his name on a piece of paper and left. Weeks passed by and I had forgotten his name. When I went back to the school, I was told that the boy had died two weeks before. Words can't describe the pain I felt.

But this is what inspired me to create an organization that could work with such young people. That's why, in 2016, I left my first job at Malawi Blood Transfusion services, after 2 months, unaware of what the future held to start @fact_malawi.

The motto was and still is "No Young Person Left Behind". With FACT, we would address the gap in access to sexual and reproductive health services and rights in young people. The journey from 2016 to now hasn't been easy. The hunt for funders only materialized in 2018.

What we have built thereafter is something that has reached to thousands of young people and offered employment opportunities directly or indirectly to more than 50 young people. The most projects we did however, were not HIV related. That has been bugging me.

I'm excited that finally with FACT, we have secured a grant to implement a project in HIV testing to unroll shortly. This far, I would say, the dream I had in 2015 is taking shape. I also hope that this thread underscores why the conversation on this topic is important to me!