“Everybody can be great, because anybody can serve. You don’t have to have a college degree to serve. You don’t have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love.”
– Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
I consider myself to be a bit of a modern nomad. Friends and family are always quick to point out the number of times I have moved or how I never seem to have an address that lasts more than a year. I just cannot stay in one place for too long, sometimes it is just a matter of wanting to live in a different part of town, other times a different part of the world. This past year was no exception as I made my move to Southern Africa. What has remained constant throughout my odysseys, is my commitment to volunteering and service. The above quote, by Dr. Martin Luther King, has been my rebuttal to others and myself, when questions about impact, time, and ability become common excuses not to engage in service or volunteer work. You do not have to be a rocket scientist or rich to give back to others in a meaningful way.
As a teenager, I volunteered as an usher at the local symphony and ballet. I loved watching the audiences react to shows I had seen a dozen times, or listening to attendees remark on which piece or act was their favorite and why. I loved the energy I felt from somehow being apart of the joy they felt afterwards. As I got older and went to college, I volunteered in cleaning up local rivers, planting trees, and visiting people in nursing homes, and coaching a refugee girls soccer team. Each experience taught me a little bit more about myself and about others.
At times, volunteering has challenged my beliefs or made me aware of issues by forcing me to lean into uncomfortable situations I would have preferably avoided or have been altogether ignorant about. It has helped me transition more easily in new environments and has allowed me to meet incredible people, to hear their stories, and sometimes to catch a glimpse of the world through their eyes. Volunteering and service is something that brings me joy and I make time for it no matter where I am living.
Shorty after I moved to Lusaka, I started volunteering with an organization called ITEZO (International Trust for the Education of Zambian Orphans). The organization was started by the wife to the Minister of Health, Mrs. Kasonde. Her vision was to create a trust for orphans and vulnerable children to be given funding and support towards the attendance of school. As the organization grew, she found that many of those who were not orphaned but were still vulnerable children and had difficulty obtaining an education. These children often had mothers that lacked any formal education or training that would have allowed them to work and provide support for their children. She began training women in knitting as a means towards empowerment and financial uplift. Women were trained to knit items and then start businesses selling their products in local markets. They gained increased support and donors through the years for their program. However, like many NGOs in the last few years, ITEZO was hampered by decreases in funding and various programs that empowered both women and youth were scaled down or eliminated.
When I began volunteering for ITEZO, I had no idea what I could do or how my time could be best utilized. I simply asked, “what can I do that would be of help?” After attending a few staff meetings and having a few discussions, I soon realized that my ideas were the best way I could help.
They had been struggling to determine ways that the organization could be more self sufficient, without the total dependence of donor based funding for support. I came up with the idea for ITEZO Gifts to sell scarves during the Christmas holidays to generate funding. I developed the idea for infinity scarves, which I sketched and designed for the women to produce, which then would be sold outside the local markets. The theory was that the women could now be trained to make a new product and then have an opportunity to sell their products to a larger global audience. We decided to run a pilot of the idea and in the end we were very successful in doing so, exceeding our goals, with the help of my GHC colleagues, William Ngosa and Karen Warner. The idea worked so well, that it is now currently being further developed to be a fully integrated into the ITEZO business model as an official social entrepreneurship program.
Recently, I had an opportunity to spend the afternoon volunteering my time at a NGO called SHINE. It was started by a British volunteer in a community school in a poor township in Zambia. Vineet Bhatnagar was shocked by the low literacy rate and poverty among children attending the local schools. Bhatnagar started SHINE Zambia a few years later to aide in improving literacy rates among youth in Zambia.
It is a school that teaches children from the Kalikiliki District and surrounding communities literacy skills. The school’s program itself is a supplementary program, aimed at providing the necessary reading skills to empower students to eventually move into the Zambian school system and excel. The school included a well stocked library, which also served as a place for adult literacy classes in the evenings and weekends. The library also served as a study center for any child or person who wished to have a place to do homework or read. I helped to serve lunch and read with students that afternoon.
I sat in on a class and helped to serve lunch students. Afterwards we read a story together in the library. I could not believe my eyes when I looked down at the book the children were reading from, it was the SAME textbook I had used when I was in school! We read the story of Stone Soup. A story that reminds everyone who reads it, young and old alike, that when we all work together and give whatever it is we can offer, everything always turns out better and we all benefit in doing so. I have enjoyed all of my volunteer experiences here in Zambia and will continue doing what I can to give what I can wherever I can.
