Today marks 100 years since the birth of Nelson Mandela (18 July 1918). The Centenary is an occasion to reflect on his life and legacy, and to follow his call to “make of the world a better place.” The Nelson Mandela Foundation is dedicating this year's Mandela Day to Action Against Poverty, honoring Nelson Mandela's leadership and devotion to fighting poverty and promoting social justice for all.
A lot has been said both good and bad about Mandela’s impact on humankind but as someone who believes in the power of words I choose to focus on the things he said that are inspiring and worthwhile for people hungry for creating change in their communities. More importantly I reflect on how I sought inspiration from Nelson Mandela's wise words to create my own legacy as a Mandela Washington Fellow!
Finding my Ah hah moment!
When I was selected for the Mandela Washington Fellowship for Young African Leaders, my first resolve was to find out something about Nelson Mandela worth taking on this journey of inspiring change. I read his biography, watched his interview with Oprah, reflections and articles about him until I had a sense about the person. One thing that stuck to my mind was his quotation which goes like, “What counts in life is not the mere fact that we have lived. It is what difference we have made to the lives of others that will determine the significance of the life we lead!” This was it, my light bulb moment or like I love to call it, my big Ah hah moment!
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| My favorite Nelson Mandela qoute |
This Madiba statement summarized everything that I stand for as a person. I don’t just want to live for myself. Whatever opportunity I am given, I want to make it count and use it to impact other people. Having found something I could relate to, I was ready to take on the mantle of Mandela Washington Fellowship.
Taking on the Mission
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| The 2017 Arizona State University Mandela Washington Fellows |
I took part in the 6 weeks Civic Leadership training at Arizona State University with other inspiring leaders from all over Africa. This was also a great reflection about leadership and through the rigorous sessions another big Ah hah moment happened. I discovered that I was a servant leader working to increase my skills and use them to impact young people. This self-awareness moment was very important as it made me realize who I am which entailed a better understanding of why I do things in a particular way. It’s so funny how we feel like we know ourselves, well from that point I also realized that life should be a journey of self-discovery. The more we know ourselves as leaders, the more we can serve better the people who look up to us!
We also took more time in reflecting about why it’s important to have values as leaders! We discussed about various values and we were tasked with choosing those that related to us individually and include them in our leadership development plan. You can just guess what hit home the most to me “LEGACY.”
Inspired to create my own legacy
I felt that all the learning, site visits and interacting with fellow leaders doing great things to change their communities were all pointing towards creating a legacy. What will people remember us for or what do we want to be remembered for? It was clear, I may never reach Mandela’s prowess in impacting human kind but can surely be inspired to create my own kind through the work that I am doing. The plan is to gain as many skills and knowledge I can and share with those around me especially young people and also give back to my community!
Together with other Mandela Washington Fellows we put together some funds and run a community challenge to engage young people to start thinking about what they can do for their community. They got into teams and presented various ideas and we gave the cash prize to the winning group who presented a project to solve access to water in their community. We also provided additional prizes like computers for those who wanted to embark on an internet cafe business and technical support to those wanting to embark in rabbit farming. We are also training the young people in computer skills.
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| The winners of the Fellows Day Challenge |
I am doing this through training young people in various skills. Simple things like how to apply for opportunities (jobs, fellowships, conferences e.t.c) nail interviews and brand themselves. I do this under 2 youth organizations Youth to Youth Empowerment and Maphunziro 265.
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| During a training session on Cover letter writing under Maphuziro 265 |
I am also mentoring young people as individuals and groups. I am a mentor for young people living with HIV under Baylor College of Medicine. This has been very humbling as I am able to instill hope and be part of efforts of encouraging them that they can be whatever they want regardless of their status. I am also a mentor for young people under Youth Hub, a grouping of young people from Malawi working to advocate for improved sexual and reproductive health for young people in Malawi. Individually, I am also mentoring young people like Cynthia who look up to me. Its humbling!
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| One of my mentees, Cynthia Chithope Mwale |
I am also creating my legacy through giving back to the community. Together with my sister, Mirriam Banda, we are working on various interventions to promote young boys and girls in our community, Area 36. We started with promoting girls menstrual health where we are teaching girls about menstrual hygiene management and working with mother groups to teach girls how to sew pads from locally available resources so that they can still go to school during their periods.
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| One of the girls from Mbuka primary school during the pad making training |
Yes you can!
In his Mandela Day lecture yesterday, Barack Obama said he was one of the countless millions who drew inspiration from Nelson Mandela's life. If you can’t be inspired by Nelson Mandela or Obama because their work seems far-fetched as they are not from communities like yours, I hope you can be inspired by stories from people like me or those around you! You will meet hurdles along the way but don’t lose hope, Obama even said it better yesterday when ending his address, "Keep believing. Keep marching. Keep building. Keep raising your voice. Every generation has the opportunity to remake the world."
Hope you found the piece inspiring! You can also drop me some feedback: tendaibnd@gmail.com or follow me on Twitter
