Kobe Smith

GBV Training Consultant, United Nations Population Fund

Kobe is a Black youth activist born and raised in Guyana. He became an activist after losing his mother to ovarian cancer because she lacked quality health information and services. He hopes to motivate more young men to speak up as champions of sexual and reproductive rights.

Kobe is the Gender-Based Violence Training Consultant at the United Nations Population Fund. Kobe is a member of Fòs Feminista’s Board of Directors and a former member of the Board of Trustees of International Planned Parenthood Federation.

He was the Project Coordinator for a Pan American Health Organization COVID-19 response project in Guyana, through which he ensured that women, youth, and other vulnerable groups have access to sexual and reproductive health information and services in the context of the pandemic. Kobe previously worked for Guyana’s leading LGBTQ rights organization, the Society Against Sexual Orientation Discrimination (SASOD), where he coordinated legal aid services to LGBTQ people seeking asylum in other countries due to the persecution they face in Guyana. He holds a Bachelor of Law degree from the University of Guyana.

Kobe successfully advocated the government of Guyana for the implementation of a national reintegration policy for teenage mothers and participated in a hearing at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. He was a speaker at the 2018 International Conference on Family Planning. He received the National Youth Award from the government of Guyana for his work promoting health education among adolescents, and in 2018 he was selected as a Women Deliver Young Leader.”