Leadership Training, Nakuru

I love Africa—exotic animals, scenery, people. There are so many natural resources packed into so much beauty. This place should be Mecca for business, industry, and tourism. Sadly, maddeningly, what holds so many people back here is the one industry where they truly succeed: the buying and selling of poverty and victim-hood.

“How do you sell poverty?” you ask. Quite simple. NGOs, Charities and Relief Agencies, and Mission Organizations all have zillions to give away to the poor: they neeeeed to give it away so that they can raise even more money from their donor base. On the other hand, the poor in Africa learned long ago that they have a “product” —poverty— for which these groups will fork over their zillions. Can you say, “Match made in heaven”?

The problem is that after over 50 years and trillions of dollars of aid and relief, Africa is demonstrably worse off now then it was before this largess. The situation is somewhat akin to the Welfare system here in the US where billions of dollars given to the poor only served to create more poverty. Just as we in the US were forced to reconsider our strategy for caring for our needy, so we need to reconsider how we are to go about serving the needy in Africa.

Certainly there are pressing needs that many Africans cannot meet on their own. Refugees in Darfur, for example, are running for the lives. They need to feed themselves today, and there is no crop you can plant this morning and harvest this afternoon.

But the long-term solution is equipping people to support themselves. What we want to do is to facilitate a migration from poverty to self-sustenance, and then to prosperity development. So, the question is not how do we meet the needs of the poor, as much as it is how do help them to meet their own needs: how do we create jobs?

Toward answering this question, The Samaritan Group (of which African American Self-Help Foundation [AASHF], Children’s Hunger Relief Fund [CHRF], and Comitato Mani Aperte [CME in Italy] are a part) joined together to begin developing micro-enterprises in those areas of Africa where we have for over 20 years been providing aid and relief.

However, you just do not give or loan someone 4-500 dollars to start a business:

Especially when over the last five decades so many NGOs and Relief Agencies have taught many Africans that they are victims and, thus, incapable of taking responsibility for their own lives

This is where the idea for Leadership Training came in.

We believe that these people are capable of generating value

We believe that they can sacrifice present desires so as to create value for the future

Having served people there for so long, we know people who are ready to change their way of being: people who are already demonstrating a desire and a vision for prosperity. All these people need from us is to help facilitate changes in their belief systems, attitudes, and behaviors that will transform them from a subsistence mindset to a prosperity mindset.

From March 17-22, Davide Zaccariello (CME) and I facilitated two trainings that would do just this. The first training (36 participants) was for potential grant recipients; the second one (8 participants) was for coaches who would help support the recipient.

The subjects we dealt with were such things as self-awareness (the intentions behind our behavior v discovering the impact our behavior is having on others and how to align the two), self-responsibility (taking responsibility for what people hear us saying: “the meaning of your communication is the response we get,” taking responsibility for the life we are creating, etc.), and making promises and creating accountability systems for the keeping of those promises.

While there are business related skills that we will handle in our October 2008 Training, Davide and I believed that the priority here was to deal with hearts and minds, i.e., with belief systems, mindsets and attitudes. Giving people skills and tools is futile if their way of being will ultimately nullify or at least dull the effectiveness of these skills.

Simply put, the Trainings were apparently a smashing success. I say “apparently” because we are only now monitoring the feedback in word-and-behavior of those who participated in the trainings. However, if what happened in the room is any gauge, these people are on their way to becoming quite successful in life and business.


They were engaged

They handled uncomfortable feedback in a very mature manner

They were keen to learn, eager to make fundamental changes in their lives

They made demonstrable changes in their belief systems and, subsequently, in their behaviors, right there in the room

One of the more frustrating things for me over the years is watching Missionaries and NGO-types treat Africans as if they were incapable of making changes, unable to take responsibility for their lives, mistaking ignorance (“I don’t know”) with stupidity (“I can’t learn”). The disrespect such a mindset communicates only served to feed one of the more lethal mindsets: “I am a victim and, therefore, impotent in life.” I can’t wait for the day when we produce a case study of these trainings that demonstrates how hungry and committed these people are to creating a better future for their families, communities and nations.

Copyright, Monte E Wilson, 2008