Can you wrap up passion?
I can hardly grasp that my fourth and last week in Ghana is just starting, 7am on Monday 13th of March. What lies ahead of me this week is 3 more days of working with the entire Nneka team at their offices, sharing best practices, introducing recommendations that our team put together to help Nneka improve its communication and fundraising strategy, followed by a full day of internal preparation for the final presentation this Friday in front of various stakeholders, Pyxera Global, USAID and other NGOs that benefited from this year’s Global Health Corporate Champions’ Program. By Friday evening, our group will start parting ways as the first jump on planes back home, while others continue travelling the contintent.
Needless to say, it will be a packed week like the other three have been. I still expect the same passion, devotion, and fun working with our Nneka team, but also imagine that mixed emotions will gradually build a dark cloud over our heads as the end of an adventure approaches. Personally, I am already dreading saying goodbye and leaving the Nneka team as well as our wonderful Global Health Champions team behind. On the other hand, as this experience has been absolutely overwhelming in terms of encounters, learnings, emotions, understanding and discovery, I am looking forward to taking all that with me back home, to let it do its work on my ideas, let it settle for a bit and see what permanent changes in my thoughts and actions this experience likely has triggered. I am also curious to see how I can bring my new vision to my old workspace, how my ideas fit into the world back home. I believe there are just as many passionate people at home, at work, but do we sometimes lack the platform of expressing it due to corporate etiquette? I am determined to open my eyes to the passion of my colleagues, to cherish and harness it much more in our day to day work to try and make a difference each day like I am doing with Nneka.
Pyxera would now say “it’s time to wrap up and prepare your final deliverables for the NGO to be successful in implementing all your work after your departure”. But I am not ready to wrap up, I am not ready to leave Ghana and Nneka alone with the hard task of helping children build a better future for themselves, their community and their country. I am not ready to hand over, go home, and sit back. I want this experience to continue. I want to continue working with such passionate people as the Nneka Youth Foundation, I want to continue to support the incredible work they are doing with whatever skills they need for sustainable activity. And I want to follow the work of so many passionate Ghanaian women, as I am absolutely fascinated by the power, the self-confidence, and the drive they have in their work and everyday life. I want to continue learning from their incredible leadership.
And just like Nneka is teaching young girls and boys to be bold, to believe in themselves, just like the UN believes in basic education for all as a path to ending poverty, I too believe in the power of education for building the self-confidence needed to strive for a purposeful life, and further believe that life-long learning is key to sucessful leadership for driving change.
