The bags are (almost) packed
My first article about my Social Sabbatical in Rwanda
It’s only a few days until I will depart for Rwanda for my Social Sabbatical. I’m very excited. It’s my first time I travel to Africa (beside some vacations in Tunisia when I was a child). But it’s not the first time I work for an African organization. One year ago, I took part in a similar program “Impact Champions for International Development” which was a virtual program that brought together people from different companies with some Power Africa partner organizations to enhance their operations performance. I worked with three other colleagues for Simusolar, a company which provides solar products to farmers and fishers and makes such products affordable also to smallholder agribusinesses. During this assignment we developed an IT architecture plan and provided software recommendations for its implementation. That was an great and interesting experience which taught me a lot. However, the drawback was that we never met in person, neither the impact champions team nor the people of the host company.
The Social Sabbatical will be very different. We will travel to Kigali and meet the team there and the host organization. We will be able to sit together in one room and discuss face-to-face. And what is maybe the most important thing for me: I can get an impression how the life in Kigali and Rwanda is. I will be there, I will see the people in their daily life, I will have the chance to travel around, and to meet many other Rwandans.
Now some notes about the organization for which we will work during the Social Sabbatical. It’s called Starlight Africa and its mission is to “shape STEM identity for the youth of Rwanda by providing engaging, interactive STEM education and materials”. They want us to help them in “strengthening the organization’s brand and marking strategy” to attract more customers. For me as a software architect at SAP that sounds like a quite challenging task. But I know that with the power of a good team you can solve even the biggest challenges.
Today I will finish packing my bags and prepare my travel to #Kigali. I hope that everything will go smoothly and I will arrive save and healthy in #Rwanda on Saturday evening.
