Doing what matters is fulfilling
“Victory is certain.”
Over a period of time, I have repeatedly been asking myself, what can I do to improve the lives of under privileged communities? I have always advocated for community programmes that allows participants to be partners of development rather than subjects of development. So in this way, we are able to create a sense of ownership through a bottom up approach to community solutions. Thereafter, little did I know that I was going to be part of Phakamisa Girls Economic Empowerment Programme (PGEEP), a programme that serves to fulfil my career objective.
While the programme has recently been launched in August 2020, we have created Hands Up Girls Squad (HUGS) and offered training workshops that educates girls and young woman about what it means to take an idea and turn it into a business. Through engaging with the project participants, I can now say I was once blind and now I can see. Here are two main areas that have changed my life:
Real change comes through taking the first step towards achieving your dreams. While we here about what ought to be done in running a successful business, many awesome ideas has remained dormant. That is laziness and the end result is no change. As facilitators began teaching about entrepreneurship development, I was motivated to see how the project participant translated their ideas into real business and programmes.
Entrepreneurship teaches critical life skills. One of my takeaways of the programme is that when you work together as part of a team to achieve common goals, victory is certain. The girls were able to share their own vision and goals in their HUGS and tangible results were noticeable. I learnt that when we put our heads together, we can easily tackle life problems in order to succeed. I realised that we can’t wait to see our society to change but we have to change the society ourselves.