A small piece of the puzzle
Every day I get to work here in Accra feels purposeful. Every conversation with the Nneka Foundation leaders, with team mates, every article or research time spent around NGOs in the education sector — feels like time well spent. It is a blessing being able to contribute to the leaders’ passionate work at helping hundreds of children find purpose in life through the possibilities and doors that education opens.
More than that, the work atmosphere here is unique: working with a “client” that thanks you every morning and every evening for being here, for helping them become more sustainable, for supporting the NGO with something sometimes as simple as time for knowledge sharing — is absolutely wonderful. The gratitude of these passionate people we are working with and their constant expression of it emphasizes the sense of purpose, the feeling of being on the right track to making a lasting contribution, and not the least creates ties, friendship and hopefully a long-lasting relationship across continents.
The same feeling of gratitude and helpfulness is present among the whole team of consultants here in Accra. Everybody has the same objective, everybody pulls on the same string, and every one present here is highly committed to providing their best ideas, their acquired knowledge, their energy, their open mind, to achieve visible results in only 4 weeks. It seems like everyone is highly willing to outdo theirselves, to try out new skill areas not previously explored but eager to learn anything that can help the NGO projects. And most of all, there are no doubts, no conflicts, nobody has any hidden agenda — everyone is working towards the same goal, which is the strongest catalyst for bright ideas.
While most days have all of that positive energy described, some days also have the occasional dark cloud lingering — the reality check. It can be a ride through a city slum where kids younger than 10 are out on the street trying to sell anything imaginable and toddlers are playing in piles of garbage. It can be meeting a 13-year old mother no longer going to school or pursuing any kind of training because the child’s father threatens to put her out on the street if she pursues any form of self-fulfilment or activity that may lead to independence. It can be seeing that same girl’s daughter, feeling that once more this is a girl that will not get the family support needed to build a strong and self-confident character to face life. Or worse, it can be learning new facts about corrupt chiefs allowing gold diggers in northern Ghana to rob natural resources while not leaving a dime to local inhabitants but instead heavily polluting their insufficient water supplies with health-endangering chemicals.
When these dark clouds appear, it seems like the world is too full of evil, has too many problems, and too big problems to even know where to start helping. And even worse, those issues that tie in corruption for pure personal, short-term financial gains, seem way beyond my tiny person’s control.
So the challenge on these days is to remember that a) these are clouds, they come and they go, but that doesn’t mean we can’t continue dreaming of bright sunshine; and b) no matter how big the problems are out there, remaining paralyzed at the thought of them is not an option, and not an excuse to sit back. Every person, every NGO, every small action is making a change, even if you just help one child, that child’s life is worth it. It doesn’t always have to be the big pieces. Hundreds of thousands of passionate activists bringing small pieces in order eventually together make a huge improvement to our world’s puzzle.
My silver lining therefore today: I shall not let any cloud blur myvision, because every contribution does make a difference for at least one person in this world. And even if I feel like, while one positive impact is achieved, a hundred more problems arise, I shall use my energy to tackle the next one starting right from tomorrow.
