Spending the last few days in the company of these students and many more in Kyangwali, I understand Eric’s drive and motivation more than ever. The work the Educate! students have done to bring the community in Kyangwali together is inspiring. We attended club meetings of COBURWAS (currently working on organizing a nursery for orphans), the Anti-violence group (a support network and forum for women) and the Cheyeye group (a 1,000 member group of children who gather food and sing traditional Congolese songs to new mothers) all led by Educate! students. The leadership roles Educate! students have taken on in their community is the inspiration behind Educate!’s new programs and its mission – to educate and empower the next generation of socially responsible leaders in Africa.

What drew me to Educate! was not just this mission, but a belief in its method. Having grown up moving from country to country, my own education has been a jumbled product of the Japanese, British, French and American educational systems. Each system had its strengths and limitations, and I have come away with a deep conviction that education should go beyond memorizing textbooks and practicing standardized tests. It should be a time to ask “what is my potential?” instead of “what is the exam like?” I studied for my A-levels at the best British school in the country where acquiring top marks was the focus and an entry to Cambridge or Oxford presumed. The goal was not to encourage individualism, or a push to find and challenge one’s own goals, but instead a push (and a shove) to ensure my school continued to be at the top of the league table by churning out women who knew how to write 4 perfect essays in a 3 hour exam. After graduating, I made the choice to go to the most liberal educational system I could find (Brown University) where I could take charge of my own education and self motivation. At Brown it was never, “here’s what you need to know for the exam” but instead a challenge to really critique the world outside of the classroom to say “what can my contribution be?”

Educate! is not about to take over school curriculums or go to war with UNEB (The Ugandan National Education Board). We are pursuing a constructive approach, partnering with schools that understand our philosophy to provide what I think of as an Educate! package – the Socially Responsible Leadership Course (teach & inspire), the Social Entrepreneurship Clubs (practical application) and mentorship (support and encouragement). In short, the Educate! package is a long-term investment in each student with the goal of creating powerful agents for change. Our Educate! students from Kyangwali are only the beginning!

Angelica tells me she is reminded of Ethiopia here. I’m reminded of my teenage years in New Delhi – lopsided hand painted advertisements, piles of weary shoes laid out on pavements, fluorescent plastic and in particular the pollution and the weaving traffic (only minus the cows). I’m back in the developing world where life is a contradiction between street peddlers with crusty shirts sticking to skinny shoulder blades and polished white landrovers zipping along with smart suited executives. I’ve settled into life in Kampala like a return home, accepting the snail-paced internet connection and the fact that being half Japanese will never prevent me from being labeled a Muzungu (white person). Occasionally I get slightly miffed (upset) when Angelica & Eric gang up on me about my British accent. On my end I have had to interpret conversations such as the following:

Angelica: Yo, E-money, we boda-ing?

Eric: Word

On a more serious note however, what I call Angelica’s “American-ness” is really a deep well of creativity and enthusiasm that she is instilling in the SRLC curriculum. My more reserved “British/Japanese-ness” has been serving only as a cultural filter for some activities that Ugandans (used to a British curriculum and teaching style after all) could find bemusing. While Angelica is creative genius extraordinaire, my role will be more on cultivating and managing our relationships with partner schools and overseeing the logistics of the program. With my background in business and consulting I feel we are a well balanced pair together! Most importantly, we’re both convinced that Educate! will instigate great social change and cannot wait to get the programs started.

The day before we left Kyangwali, Wereje Benson described Educate! as a match – one strike and vast plains of Africa are alight. So keep watching…

Emily

This is Angelica Towne writing to you live from my new home in the Pearl of Africa. Firstly, I am honored to be a part of the Educate! family and extremely proud to represent Educate! in Uganda for the next year. From inspirational humble beginnings, Educate! is soon to emerge as a powerful force of social change in Uganda and even greater Africa. This short month in Uganda has exposed me to the core values of our organization and that youthful indomitable conviction which characterizes all great breakthroughs. I can honestly say that here I am daily inspired anew.

When I arrived in Kampala I couldn’t believe I hadn’t returned to Ethiopia. They share metal sheet rooftops, perilous ditches for rainwater run-off and the sweet smell of passion fruit. Going to a local Ethiopian restaurant for dinner my first night didn’t help my disillusionment. There are also similar signs of poverty: small street children scattered across the city, heads down and hands outstretched, sitting cross-legged on the dust-red asphalt, inches away from hot boda boda exhaust pipes and billows of black smoke. In especially smoggy alleyways of downtown Kampala the air tastes just polluted enough to remind me of my winter romping in pre-Olympics Beijing. Chinese characters also dance across the face of countless taxies and imported trucks. My limited travel however has never led me to encounter the beautiful diversity of birds and flora that I have seen across Uganda.

The learning curve is steep here. By day three I was out discovering the wonders of Kampala’s public transportation system alone; by day five, I was contributing to meetings with partner school teachers; within the first week, I collaborated with the savvy intern named Helaina to think of a profit generating activity for Educate!; and finally, by day fourteen, I started to receive phone calls from someone other than Eric. I learned quickly that you can bargain for just about anything here (for hours if you are with Eric) and the midnight pineapple truck in the old taxi park is definitely worth the wait. Mainly, I learned that I had a lot to learn: about Ugandan social issues, the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, and an interesting school called Cornerstone Leadership Academy if I was going to make the necessary progress on the socially responsible leadership course’s curriculum development. Cornerstone teaches the principles and precepts of Jesus as a leader instead of focusing on his traditional role in Christianity. It hopes to unite all religions and peoples in the name of Jesus as an exemplary leader and human being, rather than a religious figure. For example, there is the principle of resourcefulness, committed relationships, and servant leadership.

Our curriculum draws heavily on the principles taught by Cornerstone, as well as some things from the African Leadership Academy and LEAD International. We are compiling curriculum from these different organization’s models because they are proven to be effective and cross-culturally relevant. In addition to compiling and integrating the curricula of these sources, I have included some of the leadership training exercises and multi-cultural games I’ve learned in my years of working in non-profits. Truth is that I didn’t actually “work” for these nonprofits as much as I was raised and molded by them. Growing up in the public housing projects of East Harlem, I know firsthand what it means to be literally saved by nonprofit organizations that embody creative solutions to society’s opportunity gaps. At Kyangwali Refugee Camp, Benson Wereje, Bahati and I swapped stories of how we all received “sponsorship” or scholarships to attend university and how it changed our lives forever. I felt such a beautiful solidarity with our students and reaffirmation of the necessity of work.

My college sponsorship organization is a New York based non-profit called Posse. Similar to the evolution of Educate! programs, Posse began with the idea of providing more students with a quality education so that they could somehow better society and join the workforce. The founder of Posse, Debbie Bial, shortly realized that she could do and needed to do so much more than simply provide funds for higher education; now, Posse has a six-month intensive leadership and diversity training program which sends groups or “posses” to top liberal arts colleges across the country with the challenge to the students to become leaders and change-makers on campus. The scholarship money was useful in opening the iron doors of opportunity, but more importantly, the training and continued support of mentors on campus opened the doors to our hearts and minds. Posse gave me the skills, confidence, and support to believe that a short halfrican girl with no money and even less confidence could be powerful. I made my voice heard on campus, took action in my local community, worked internationally, and finally accomplished my dream of working for student empowerment in the developing world.

My goal for the socially responsible leadership course and everything we do in Educate! is to empower students to realize their potential and actualize their dreams. The worst aspect of poverty is mental. Poverty erodes your self-esteem: you feel the world would probably be better off without you since you obviously can’t contribute meaningfully to society much less control your own life. I am proud of Educate!’s new focus on both financial assistance and empowerment. With our programs, we can change the course of children’s lives and the future of a nation.

African Warmth,

Angelica Towne

Program Director

My name is Stacey and I’m one of this summer’s Educate! interns. After an incredible month in Uganda I returned home inspired by Educate!’s progress and sad to leave the country behind. Quickly, I’m going to try to bring you up to speed on the goings-on in Uganda through the day I left four weeks ago. Here goes…

Julia and Helaina left off with our exciting adventure down the Nile. During the next week we continued to run from school to school making connections and building relationships with administrators, teachers and students. The following weekend, Eric, Nate and I traveled to Mbale, a city 4 hours east of Kampala at the base of the beautiful Mt. Elgon. The crazy weekend started when our bus hit a woman and was impounded. We all piled into a second already-full bus; Eric ended up sitting beneath a rather large woman and Nate and I sat on the floor next to the driver about a foot from the windshield. Luckily, we arrived safely, and over the next day and a half met with each of the five schools we are working with in and around Mbale. The following day we held the first cluster meeting attended by representatives from each of the schools.

Back in Kampala it was business as usual. We continued to identify potential partner schools and to solidify our relationships with the schools already on board.

Near the end of the week, four interns (Julia, Helaina, Nate, and I) headed to Hoima to meet with our partner schools there and conduct a cluster meeting as we had in Mbale. The cluster meeting was a huge success; the representatives from the Hoima schools were extremely talkative and offered many valuable suggestions for the implementation of the programs in their region. The highlight of the trip, however, was arriving at Kitara Secondary School to find the COBURWAS members huddled up singing their club anthem. COBURWAS (standing for Congolese, Burundese, Ugandan, Rwandese, and Sudanese) is the club started by several Educate! students in Kyangwali Refugee Settlement, and they had spent the day cleaning up Kitara. Agnes, a teacher at Kitara, spoke about how inspiring the club was; when she was first told that there’d be a group of students volunteering at the school, she was skeptical – what type of students would do something so wonderful for the school without asking anything in return? She was overwhelmed when students showed up from all over Hoima to pitch in. It is these students and the wonderful work they are doing that give her and us confidence in the new Educate! programs. We hope that, with a little encouragement, students all over Uganda can be inspired to give back to their communities in the way COBURWAS has. Many of the Educate! students are model socially responsible leaders, and our new programs are designed to give more students the tools and confidence to follow in their footsteps and realize their visions for their own lives.

After our Hoima cluster meeting, Julia and Nate returned to Kampala while Helaina and I endured the bumpy taxi ride to Kyangwali. During our two days in the settlement we attended church with Joseph Munyambanza; visited the homes of many Educate! students, COBURWAS members, and other friends in the camp; walked the 14 km to and from the medical center right outside the settlement; played volleyball with primary school students; and uprooted potatoes at the COBURWAS orphanage, making us both the first white people to dig in the camp and the first volunteers at the orphanage. We returned to Kampala exhausted but content.

After a few more days of visiting schools around the capital, it was time for me to leave. I was sad to leave the work and the people, but inspired by everything I had seen. Educate! has found some amazing partner schools to work with – ones that understand and value socially responsible leadership but haven’t yet found a way to encourage it in their students. That’s where our programs come in! With the full support of our partner schools and the vision provided by the current Educate! students and COBURWAS, I am confident in the success of the programs.

I apologize for the length of this post, but there is really so much to tell! I’ll wrap it up now by sharing with you a letter written by Joseph Munyambanza to Educate! supporters. For me, ending with Joseph’s words is fitting. I started corresponding with Joseph three years ago, and the friendship he’s offered has been amazing. He is incredibly inspiring in both his personal relationships and vision for his life and contribution to his continent. Joseph will be beginning school at the African Leadership Academy in South Africa in September, and I want to wish him the best of luck. And, with that, here are his words:

Special thanks to my caring parents/guardians in Educate!

Surely, I cannot precisely express how much you mean to us, our community, country, our motherland Africa, and the world at large! I am very sorry my words cannot give the appreciation you deserve. They can at most give 1% of it.

The best gift a parent can give to the beloved child is nothing rather than education. The exact gift you have provided to us when we and the world around us greatly need it.

Man’s needs are said to be endless and most especially at the youth stage. It is always difficult for a parent who loves his child to satisfy his/her needs. All Educate! students are in this youth stage and this means that Educate! parents could find it hard to meet their children’s needs. In Educate!, our parents loving us sincerely and wisely, they have not provided whatever we need, but have provided what is fit for us and the world around us. The education you are giving to us is so precious that it will help us to satisfy our needs and the community’s needs.

I thank you for everything you have done for us in Educate!. you have changed our behaviors. You have built our hope for the future. You have shown us the key to the future. You have given our vision a good base. And now we dream big day and night. Our dear caring guardians/parents, a list of what you do is so big and kept on the flashes of our hearts and our future will give the details of your good concern.

We feel supported all the time. No matter how far you are from us, you hear us when we cry for help. Thank you for your kindness, humility, strong and unique love you have for Africa. You have loved us without knowing us. We are so grateful, delighted and excited of your wonderful love.

You have decided to reduce your meals because of us. You have sacrificed your sleep in search of our school fees and other scholastic materials. You struggle here and there so as to keep us at school. You have done much in favor of our community’s future. You have inspired us through what you do. Now the question we have is “what will our community be like in 15-20 years to come?”

Personally, I am living like a runner in a race. Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training so as to get a crown. I therefore focus to my vision. I do try all I can to maintain discipline, carefully following the footsteps of my role models and making it simple for those who will consider me their role model.

May Almighty God bless Wolford’s family abundantly for considering me part of their family, Stacey Frumm for being my close friend, Mom Beth for the spiritual food and other good things she does in the refugees’ camp in Kyangwali. And may God bless all Educate! donors because their contribution to our community and Africa at large is so excellent.

Thanks very much (100%).

Sincerely,

Joseph Munyambanza

The conference was organized for people who are united across religion, location, and culture by the same principles. With almost every continent represented, there were Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, and agnostics present.

Several people attending the conference are at the forefront of areas such as encouraging principled leadership among students, character development, and youth mentoring (all three of which are crucial to Educate!’s work). I was able to learn from Doug Coe’s group, which began a youth mentoring program based on the model of the Civilian Conservation Corps that has now spread worldwide, and share more ideas with Cornerstone staff and teachers about how to most effectively use mentors to encourage principled leadership among students, thus allowing them to take full advantage of their potential.

In addition to the people, the location of the conference was amazing. Set at a beautiful mountain lodge on the slopes of Mt. Kilimanjaro, we had time to swim, play soccer, go running, and even golf in the afternoons. In fact, with the gourmet food, luxurious accommodation, and warm water we might as well have been at a resort in Aspen, Colorado… we were, however, quickly reminded of our true location after the group golfing ahead of us had a run in with a king cobra on the fifth hole!!!

All in all, the conference was an incredible experience, and not only for the passion fruit mousse (my new favorite food) we had for dessert one night. I feel like I learned an incredible amount both on a personal level and about how Educate! can most effectively empower students to solve the problems Uganda, and Africa, are facing.

After settling into the office, the interns were paired off and assigned to research potential partner schools in different districts of Kampala. Julia and Nate were in charge of the Kawempe district, while Helaina and Stacey took on Wakiso. Specifically, each of the pairs met with administrators from various schools to present the Educate! programs and to get a feel for the culture of each school. A typical meeting consists of a presentation by the interns of the Educate! leadership programs, answering questions and responding to concerns, and inquiring into the philosophy and curriculum of each school. Each pair has successfully identified four schools in each district that Educate! will work with. Helaina and Julia have now moved on to the Makindye district where they will again begin the research process. Nate will continue to build the relationship between Educate! and the Kawempe schools while Stacey does the same in Wakiso. Everyone is pleased with the progress so far and anticipates that the school selection in each cluster will be finalized
within the next few weeks.

On another note, who knew that the mouth of the Nile is in Uganda? After this discovery, the Educate! team joined up with volunteers from a nearby NGO two weekends agoto take on the mighty Nile. Driving to the rafting base, the interns happened to catch a glimpse of a crocodile lurking in the water near the rapids. Helaina and Julia soon learned that these were no ordinary rapids – four of the twelve were CLASS FIVE (The highest categorization short of a waterfall). Although the endeavor was daunting, their fears were calmed by Juma, their quirky rafting guide. He began by the trip by announcing that he was scared, he hated flipping, and that this was his second week of guiding. Thankfully, they later realized that at least three quarters of everything he said was a lie, including the fact that his second job was pimping, his “little” knowledge of English, and his number of wives. To truly appreciate Juma in all his glory, you have to spend a whole
day in a floating 10 x 4 vehicle with him. The rafting itself was relatively terrifying, to say the least. Each of the two times their boat flipped, everyone drank at least two liters of Nile water while floundering about as
the safety kayaks rushed to the rescue. But despite the flips and the black mamba snaking through the water, it really was one of the most incredible experiences and everyone thoroughly enjoyed themselves. If you are ever overcome with a desire to conquer this legendary river, look up Nile River Explorers, which really is “probably the best rafting in the world.”

Thanks for tuning in! Nate and Stacey will post shortly about their experience so far. Weeraba!**

*”What’s up” in Luganda

**”Goodbye” in Luganda

I’m Lulu, one of the Educate! interns from Boulder, CO. I arrived about 3 weeks ago, and immediately headed to Mbale with Eric and his lovely mother Leslie. Mbale is beautiful–a small, more relaxed town at the foot of cloud-capped mountains–and was a really nice place to stay as I familiarized myself with the Ugandan swing of things. Eric took me to meet some leaders of the schools we either currently partner with or hope to partner with in the future, and during our off-time we hung out at our favorite restaurant, Hotel Eldima. We also found time to visit Sipi Falls, where we experienced not only the beauty of the falls, but also the most delicious chapati I have ever tasted. We have yet to find chapats as tasty as those.

We left Mbale on Fri and headed back to the guest house in Mukono to meet up with some other volunteers. After a crazy weekend (which included attending a Uganda vs. Niger football game and dancing the night away at a Kampala club) I decided I was officially an expert on Uganda and could take on some Educate! tasks independently. As Eric explained in the previous blog, my primary responsibilities for the summer relate to the mentor position we must fill before February. Applications are due at the end of the month, so I spent a bit of time traveling around to universities and hanging advertisements for the position. We have already been inundated with emails from interested students, and I’m really looking forward to the selection process.

Eric and I headed to Entebbe together to pick up Stacey and Julia from the airport, and after Stacey recovered from a brief spell of what a slightly “local” doctor claimed was Malaria, we made our way to the Educate! office for the night. At this point I should give kudos to Jay for finding such a fabulous house for us to invade: the place is about 20 min from downtown Kampala, and includes a beautiful garden boasting numerous fruit trees– two of which happen to be perfectly positioned for a slack line. Plus, we discovered a Rolex maker literally 2 min down the road, so it doesn’t get much better than this! The task now is to find furniture, appliances, food, and all the other supplies necessary to actually LIVE in the house, as opposed to camping in the living room as we are currently doing. Hopefully we can make our house classy enough by Friday, when we hope to have a house-warming party.

Two weeks ago, Stacey, Julia, Eric and I made the long journey to Kyangwali Refugee Camp to meet up with the Think Humanity volunteers, who came for a massive mosquito-net distribution. To describe the entire weekend at the camp would take days, but some highlights included attending a beautiful Ugandan wedding (congrats to JP!),  and hearing the COBURWAS members sing their hearts out. Being in the camp was a totally eye-opening experience for me, and I think it will take a while to process all the emotions I felt while interacting with the refugees. They are incredibly inspiring individuals for whom I have so much respect.

I think at this point I’m going to let Stacey and Julia give a little update, because there is still much to tell (small hint: it involves swallowing gallons of Nile River water). To end, I’d like to note that Helaina’s Luganda-English dictionary has taught me how to say a few key phrases in Luganda. Aside from the basics (hello, thank you, sir, etc), these include “go away,” “I don’t want it,” “are you mad?” and “why do you make children cry every day?”

Cheers!

James has been in charge of the search for our office, which we just moved into on Tuesday. He did an excellent job with the search and found a beautiful compound which combines office and living space, can sleep all the interns as well as our country directors who are starting in July, and is well suited to host larger meetings with our partner schools or the Educate! Leadership Institute which brings together students from each of our partner schools. It is set on one of the gorgeous hills of Kampala, is not too far from Lake Victoria, and has a gorgeous yard with mango, orange, guava, and avocado trees.

Lulu has been in charge of the mentor recruiting and hiring process. The mentors are the recent graduates of universities in Uganda that we are hiring based on the Teach for America model. We place the mentors at our partner secondary schools where they teach our two year course in socially responsible leadership and help facilitate the social entrepreneurship club. Lulu’s advertized for the position at different universities and is also getting recommendations from our partner organizations and different contacts we have at universities. There has been great interest in the position so far!

Nate and Julia are in charge of developing our relationship with our partner schools in the Kawempe cluster (each cluster is a group of five partner schools). Kawempe is a region in the northern part of Kampala and is one of four clusters we have in the city (we also have one cluster in Hoima, which is in western Uganda, and one in Mbale, eastern Uganda, for six clusters total). Nate and Julia will first be doing research to gain an understanding of the different schools in the Kawempe region. They then will approach the five schools which we believe will be best to implement the programs at and begin to build our relationship with each school. The goal is to have each school ready to accept a mentor and support our programs starting in Feb 2009 when the next school year begins.

Stacey and Helaina are doing similar work to Nate and Julia, but in the Central/Wakiso cluster of Kampala.

Today was Nate, Julia, Stacey, and Helaina’s first day in their clusters everything went great! All the interns will write more about their work before too long.

On a side note, we discovered that a combination of ¾ passion fruit juice with ¼ mango juice is possibly one of the most delicious drinks ever… our new slogan is therefore: “The more passion the better.”

Now, our focus is on implementing the program with the help of Mutume Robert Sempa, Educate!’s Program Director; James Hepburn, a volunteer from the UK and a classmate of mine at Amherst College, and now Lulu Feingold (who arrived today), a volunteer from Boulder, Colorado and student at CU. We are developing partnerships with secondary schools to implement each of the three aspects of the program: a social entrepreneurship club, the leadership institute, and a two year course in socially responsible leadership – see previous blog entries for a further description of each program. The majority of our partner schools are here in Kampala and the surrounding areas. Mutume has taken over developing the relationships with these schools. We also have two clusters of 5 partner schools in Hoima and Mbale. So I’ve been back and forth between Hoima and Mbale over the past two weeks to cultivate the relationships with our partner schools in each location such that they are ready to begin implementing the programs. James has been in Kampala where he has found an office, which fits our needs extremely well by providing living space for the staff and interns and a location to hold the leadership institute and the training of the mentors. (The mentors are Educate! hired and trained recent graduates of university who are placed at each of our partner schools to implement the programs. The mentors make a two year commitment according to the Teach for America model, check out previous entry for more info.) James has also begun the process of registering Educate! as an NGO in Uganda (we’re only registered in the States as of now).

At the same time as we are developing relationships with partner schools, we’re also recruiting and selecting the mentors. The mentors are recent graduates of Ugandan universities who will be placed at 5 of our partner schools (a cluster), spending one day each week at each partner school. They will primarily work with a group of approximately 25 students at each school. Their time will be split between teaching the two year course in socially responsible leadership, facilitating the social entrepreneurship club, and working to provide general support and encouragement to their group of students.

The timeline is for the rest of 2008 we are developing relationships with our partner schools, implementing the social entrepreneurship clubs and phase 1 of the leadership institute (a one day seminar for students and teachers), and recruiting, selecting, and training the mentors. Then, beginning with the school year in February 2009, the mentors will be placed at our partner schools and the two year course in socially responsible leadership will begin.

Although we are making good progress, there have of course been a few hiccups. James recently found a slightly charred chicken feather in his rolex (fried bread wrapped around fried egg, which is usually quite delicious when free of feathers); we’ve been swindled although only in minor cases, by several people we hoped we could trust; and on Lulu’s first day our taxi got stuck in the mud twice, lost once on the back roads of Kampala, and almost led a caravan of vehicles straight into a newly constructed ditch – it was quite the welcoming to Uganda!

We’re excited for Educate!’s five interns to arrive in June, and I hope to hear your comments and questions on our progress so far.

Educate!’s clubs in Uganda and its student leaders are helping kids who are affected by the conflict. By involving our students in education, community service, and politics they will be able to envision a Congo without crimes that physically and emotionally destroy lives. Our students have already started an Educate! club in Goma, the heart of violence and conflict in the Congo, and many aspire to return to the Congo to start NGOs and become political leaders.

http://www.economist.com/world/africa/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11294767

We found out recently some truly incredible news. Joseph Munyambanza, one of the Educate! students, was admitted to first class of students at African Leadership Academy. ALA is a model advanced level secondary school opening in South Africa this year. They only accept 100 students and received applications from all over Africa (including over 100 from Uganda alone!). The admission process was tough. Two rounds of applications as well as a day long practical interview. It is truly amazing that Joseph was admitted to ALA, but I am confident that he deserves it. His work in and out of school from starting a tutoring program benefitting over 60 students, to receiving top grades, to helping COBURWAS develop programs for the youth in Kyangwali Refugee Camp is unprecedented. I believe his personality and attitude on life will make him an integral part of the first ALA student body.  You can also read a blog post from Joseph below.

Educate! Leadership Institute

We recently held the first phase of the Educate! leadership institute at our partner school, Mt. Masaba HS in Mbale, Uganda. It was a one day program which focused on socially responsible leadership and social entrepreneurship for teachers and administrators at Mt. Masaba. We of course want to hold the institute for students eventually, but one of the things that we have learned is that the culture of a school from the headmaster down to the teachers, to the students is one of the most important factors in promoting creative thinking and the values associated with social responsibility. As a result we began by holding the seminar for teachers and administrators at Mt. Masaba. Once the students begin to develop social enterprises through the social entrepreneurshp club developing at Mt. Masaba, we will hold the seminar for the students as well.

It was good to have a working draft of the curriculum set and ready to go, and while I think there are some improvements we need to make, overall I thought the first run was a success. We used some material from Cornerstone, a trend-setting school here which focuses on teaching universal principles that cut across time and place – concepts such as integrity and respect. (Josephats, an alumni of Cornerstone, who now works for the organization presented that material.) Madanda and Margaret (two of the founding members of Mt. Masaba who are on our advisory board) and I presented the rest of the material which included the importance of a vision and mission in leadership, leadership is global, social entrepreneurship, sustainable development, and case studies of Nelson Mandela and Fabio Rosa (a classic example of a social entrepreneur in Brazil).

Over the past two weeks we’ve been cultivating the relationships we have with our partner schools, introducing the Educate! program to many different organizations and individuals, and working to receive permission from the Ministry of Education to begin implementing the four aspects of the Educate! program at our partner schools.

The goal of the leadership institute, as well as the Educate! program as a whole, is to encourage and support students as they do work similar to that done by Joseph Munyambanza. The leadership skills are important, but the self-confidence is just as important to a student’s success. The Educate! program aims to encourage both on a large scale among diverse students across Uganda.

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