From Silicon Valley to Swaziland by Rick & Wendy Walleigh (read aloud txt) 📖

Junior Achievement

As we flew back to Swaziland together, Wendy and I discussed her progress and plans for Junior Achievement (JA) and her experience at the conference. I already knew that she had achieved a very solid milestone before leaving Swaziland. The JA vice president for Africa had sent out an e-mail to JA World-wide that the Democratic Republic of Congo would be the ninth JA member nation in Africa, and Swaziland and Gambia had become JA affiliates with plans for eventual full membership. TechnoServe would build the capacity of LULOTE to become responsible for the School-Age Youth Entrepreneurship (SAYE) program for sixteen to twenty-four-year-olds. Together, they planned to pilot JA Economics for Success and the JA Company programs within a few months then add JA Job Shadowing and JA Service Learning the following year and maybe a JA Company student competition in year three. Within five years, the plan was to serve over 7,500 SAYE students.

While the notice was very inspirational, the steps between the JA vice president of Africa’s announcement and the actual pilot of the first training classes required many, many hours of detailed efforts before Wendy and I left Swaziland. Although there was general agreement on what would happen, Wendy had to use all of her project management and relationship skills to work with the multiple divisions within JA to receive, customize, and reproduce the classroom materials that would be required.

In the end, Wendy was able to customize and locally print some of the JA materials that had been received electronically. However, several heavy boxes of student workbooks and other classroom handouts had to be transported in Leslie’s luggage as she returned from a visit to the United States. In addition to preparing the materials, Wendy also had to train the local trainers who would be delivering the classes and had never seen JA materials before. I was going to help with the training, and at least I had previously volunteered to teach a couple of JA programs in the United States so had a clue where she was leading the trainees.

The JA conference in Nairobi was an energizing experience for Wendy and a diversion from her flurry of activity in Swaziland. As is usually the case, the people were the highlight. She felt privileged to spend time with the twenty other JA country managers and staff. She said that the challenges these people were overcoming daily to make an impact on their countries made the stresses of JA United States and her own challenges in Swaziland seem quite small. She described many of the individuals starting with Phil and Robert from Zimbabwe whose humor kept their whole group laughing for three days and who had made JA successful despite their political environment (a very positive attitude and a sense of humor must be necessities to survive in Zimbabwe). Then she went on to describe Jules, a great dancer from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, who had to start up JA despite the uncertainty of upcoming elections and ongoing violence throughout the country. Then there was Luciano from Angola who would need all of his pastoral skills and spiritual perspective for starting up JA in a country coming out of many years of instability. Quiet and shy Teddy from Zambia had persisted over the previous few years to serve a few hundred JA students annually when many others would have given up.

At their JA Africa “graduation,” the two women from Nigeria, Franca and Kunbi, dressed in traditional costumes including the wrapped headgear and put everyone in a festive mood. At the conclusion of the conference, each participant received a tongue-in-cheek award that was announced by the person whose last name preceded theirs in the alphabet. Wendy’s award was announced by John Wali from Kenya (sounds the same as Walleigh, but there’s no familial relationship or resemblance). The Swazi participants from TechnoServe and LULOTE bonded with their peers who greatly respected their initiative. It was a good start for the Swaziland JA program. Wendy said that the conference was typical of many JA events she had attended—very long, intense, and satisfying despite 8:00 a.m. to 9:00 or 10:00 p.m. daily schedules. She was inspired from her three days with JA colleagues from all over Africa who shared their passion and energy despite political instability, HIV/AIDS, and global neglect. It was very humbling for her to know what these JA people had survived while retaining their energy and commitment. She also felt that everyone learned a lot from each other and that there really was hope for the future of Africa with people like these.

Back in Swaziland, with the inspiration from her African peers still fresh, we continued our JA activities the very next weekend. On Saturday, Wendy and I, along with five additional volunteer trainers from TechnoServe and our Swazi partner LULOTE, simultaneously taught the first JA classes in Swaziland in three different locations. The JA Economics for Success was chosen as the first class to be taught. With this introductory course as a pilot, Wendy and her colleagues could gauge what class content was appropriate for each age group, how long the sessions needed to be, and how to help prepare the JA volunteer teachers.

Fortunately, Wendy and I had previously taught this class in the United States so it was adapting the material to the new culture and training teachers who had never observed, never mind taught, the classes that were challenging. In one example of how Wendy had to rewrite the content, one module teaches young people in the United States the dangers of spending too much money on their credit cards and building up large balances. In Swaziland, credit cards for young people were almost nonexistent and the students couldn’t understand how people could be so foolish as to spend large amounts of money they didn’t have. (Who says U.S. society is more advanced than Africa?) In all, over one hundred sixteen- to eighteen-year-old students from nine secondary schools learned how to assess their skills, interests, and values; make informed choices and decisions; and to appreciate the consequences. We piloted the JA Economics for Success on three sequential Saturday mornings in multiple locations to benchmark the capabilities of students from rural and urban areas and public and parochial schools. The first class consisted of playing a game to have a successful career with realistic simulation of choices about schooling and spending money. All of the volunteers enjoyed themselves, and it seemed as though the kids did too. It was great to see that teenagers are similar all over the world.

Over the next few weeks, Wendy kept busy with the SAYE (School-Age Youth Entrepreneurship) youth program. In addition to choosing, modifying, and piloting the curriculum, Wendy was asked to help pursue donor funding to support the program long-term. She called on her sales and marketing skills from her corporate days as well as her fund-raising experience from JA Silicon Valley, where she had led the staff to annually raise U.S. $1 million through grants, events, and donor solicitation. Through a few published lists of businesses and financial, civil, and other institutions as well as online research and colleague information, Wendy created a potential donor list to start targeting. In her remaining time in Swaziland, she helped create a presentation to appeal to business donors then began to set up appointments for Leslie and herself in both Swaziland and South Africa where most of the multinationals were headquartered.

Wendy also arranged and facilitated the final session of JA Economics for Success, which was especially interesting for us because it included three local guest speakers. The first was Mrs. Gamedze, the executive director of LULOTE and a Swazi senator, chairman of the SwaziBank board of directors and on the board of multiple other institutions. Wendy had become very impressed with her and her passion toward developing youth. She spoke from her heart to the thirty-plus young people about growing up poor but aiming to get a diploma to teach business classes in secondary school. She went on to graduate from university, eventually received a master’s degree in Scotland, took courses in the United States, and now runs an NGO among her other duties.

The second speaker ran a local enterprise, Gone Rural, which had been nominated for global recognition by the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation). Her staff worked with nearly seven hundred rural women who gathered weaving grass, sold it for dying to Gone Rural,