Umra Omar, (Kenya, UWC Atlantic 2000-2002), is the founder of Safari Doctors, a program operating out of the coastal county of Kenya, Lamu, offering free basic medical services where there were almost none. She was born in Mombasa then spent her early childhood in Tchundwa, a village on Pate Island that sits along the Lamu archipelago.
In 2000, Umra, an alumna of Rusinga High School, joined UWC Atlantic College in Wales to pursue her IB Diploma Programme. This was her first time out of the country at the age of 17, immersed in a totally new world of responsibility and possibilities. Then came the undergraduate scholarship to study at Oberlin College, Ohio, where she focused on Neuroscience and Psychology. She also holds a Master’s Degree in Social Justice and Intercultural Relations from the School for International Training.
In 2006, Umra began her professional career as a Program Coordinator at the American Psychological Association on HIV/AIDS in Washington D.C. However, she was longing to return to Kenya. “When all is said and done, it feels like a lie to only work to get a pay check,” said Omar in a CNN interview.
She moved home in 2010, “It was kind of a sense of responsibility,” She says. After a solid job in Kenya, upon her return as a Health and Rights Program Assistant for Open Society Initiative for Eastern Africa, she resigned and started consulting, going back and forth between Nairobi and New York. Then starting a family found her spending more time in New York where her husband lived. During a vacation in Tchundwa, she learned of the need for heath care services in Lamu and the projects that had come to a standstill due to perceived insecurity in the region. With a little more research on the reality and the challenges, she decided to start up Safari Doctors in January 2015. That decision stemmed from the need of being where her services would be of greater impact. Lamu, once a sought-after tourist destination is today being shunned because of threats by Islamic terror group Al-Shabaab. In the remote area of islands near the Kenyan-Somali border, the Lamu Archipelago, aid groups have stopped working and infrastructures are crumbling. “We have about six villages that have absolutely zero access to health care,” Omar said.