Knowing who you are and accepting who you are doesn’t
make you perfect, far from it! It however gives you courage to venture out and
try new things. You begin to solve the problems around you instead of
complaining or blaming it on others. This perception to life is transformative
to say the least.
During the SWOT, one of the opportunities that my
friends pointed out was sharing my experiences with others. I translated this
to mean sharing my experiences and serving my community at home. As I was thinking what this may look like and
how best to seek this opportunity, I did some reading as well and came across the
quote below and in my haste to put it down I forgot to note the author. It however spoke to me then and still does now.
“The
commitment to community doesn’t arise out of nowhere. It comes from and
is guided by values, principles, and assumptions that spring from our
backgrounds and cultures, from our experiences, and from our conscious
decisions about what is right. These values, principles, and assumptions shape
our vision of the world as it should be, and motivate us to try to make it so.”
I work with young people and as I actively sought to serve
my community the opportunity was right there; supporting a Youth Polytechnic
less than one Kilometer from my home in the village, actually a walking
distance! The interesting thing is that I had never quite noticed it until the
whole thought of serving my community became important to me.
The details of how I became the Chair of the Board of
Management, Gachika Youth Polytechnic on 31st May 2010 may interest
you but I won’t discuss it now, I instead want to talk about the joy of
serving. This was another strength identified during my SWOT. The other
strength was my green fingers which I have insinuated on the video clip this
week.
The joy of serving started in primary school when I
joined the Kenya Girl Guides movement as a Brownie, and later became a Girl
Guide. I took the Guide’s promise literally – ‘I promised on my honour that I
would do my best, to do my duty to God and my country, to help other people at
all times and to obey the Guide’s laws’
Taking up the challenge of serving at the youth
polytechnic has not been easy, I have however increased my knowledge of how
polytechnics work, I have understood my community better especially the youth,
I have also had an opportunity to interact with local leaders. One of my
weaknesses, impatience, has taken a turning for the better as working with community
calls for real patience. It is work in progress and every year I get better.
The joy comes in doing something that is fulfilling
and seeing the impact of your effort. Since I joined the polytechnic Board, we
have put up seven new classrooms, we have a strategic plan, operational plan
and we are now working on several income streams that will ensure regular income to run the institution sustainably.
I would like to encourage you to start or join a
community project at home. The solution to local problems lies with us and from
your SWOT you will realize that you have what it takes. Next week I will be
talking in more detail about Community Projects, I will give you various suggestions
on where you could begin. Keep following…
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