Train 1,000 Zimbabwean Students On Leadership

Dear Lead Us Today supporter,

In the last two months since the beginning of our 2013/4 programs cycle and financial year, Lead Us Today has been off to a really great start, all thanks to your generous and significant support. I’d like to share with you some of the highlights from the last two months, which set a promising precedent for the rest of the year:

• Our first big undertaking as we started the year was celebrating the great successes of the 2012/3 programs cycle through a student project expo, which was attended by eighty of the students in our program. During the expo, our students reflected on their experience of the program and shared the process of designing and implementing their community development projects. The impressive projects, which they presented on, include:
  • A catering business in Mpopoma High School with an enrollment of 2,000 students. Lead Us Today students recruited unemployed youth and arranged for them to receive catering lessons from professional caterers. Thereafter, our students helped the unemployed youth to open a canteen in the school that provides hot, nutritious meals to student and staff for only $1 – a much healthier alternative to the junk food students usually bought.
  • A community recycling project in the Nkulumane area, in which Lead Us Today students partnered with a recycling company in Zimbabwe, the National Waste Collectors (NWC). NWC regularly collects recyclable waste that students gather from schools in their area.
  • A business that makes and sells educational blocks that develop children’s analytical skills. The students make the educational blocks from scrap wood, which they cut into different shapes and sizes, and paint with different colors. The students sell these blocks to underresourced Early Childhood Development Centers around Bulawayo at very affordable prices.
• In August, we recruited a deeply committed and diverse team of nineteen facilitators who went through a rigorous two-week training program. The team of facilitators includes a jazz artist, young businesspeople, recent high school graduates, college students and professionals. We are excited to see how this diversity enriches our students’ learning. During the training, the facilitators learnt extensively about leadership, social innovation, teamwork, monitoring and evaluation and how to communicate their ideas for social change through pitches and comprehensive project proposals. I invite you to meet our facilitators whose profiles are on our website:

http://www.leadustoday.org/our-people/zimbabwe-team/programs-staff/bulawayo/

http://www.leadustoday.org/our-people/zimbabwe-team/programs-staff/esigodini/

http://www.leadustoday.org/our-people/zimbabwe-team/programs-staff/gweru/

• For the first time since our founding in May 2010, we are expanding! This year, we have increased the number of schools we are partnering with from eight to twenty. We are very confident making this leap especially because we have spent the last three years developing and refining our model. Our expansion has made it possible to reach groups of students who have great need for our programs. For the first time, we are working in rural schools where young people face challenges that greatly diminish their opportunities for leading innovative and entrepreneurial lives. Also, we are working in one of Zimbabwe’s very few schools for the disabled, King George VI Memorial School. Indeed, through working more with underserved young people, we are increasing our impact and transforming many more lives in unprecedented ways. Through this expansion, we are working with close to 1,000 students in twenty schools across three out of Zimbabwe’s ten provinces.
• At the beginning of the school term in September, our facilitators began training our students in the schools where we operate. Over the next year, facilitators will meet with students every week for up to two hours and share our curriculum and their experiences, using the workbooks we have developed as a guide to students’ learning.

Please take time to look through pictures of our facilitators, students and staff which demonstrate their passion for our work.

In the coming year, we are excited to share with you how your support is making an impact in our students’ lives.

We are still campaigning to raise $25,000 to fully fund our key programs for the year 2013/4. We have raised over half of that and we need to raise an additional $12,000. Your contributions are key, every dollar counts and we invite you to donate what you can here: http://goto.gg/12608. 

As always, thank you for your continued, significant support. It is changing so many lives in Zimbabwe.

With deep gratitude,

Dalumuzi Mhlanga

Founder and CEO

Dear Lead Us Today supporter,

A few months ago, you joined the Lead Us Today family by donating and supporting our mission to inspire, empower and mobilize young Zimbabweans to make an impact in their communities. We are very grateful for your contribution towards our 2013/4 programming. As I mentioned to you, we have not yet used your generous contribution – we will begin to at the start of our next fiscal year on August 1^st, 2013.

I would still like to update you on our progress in our current fiscal year. As you might know, last year we raised $7,550 through GlobalGiving! These contributions made up a significant 38% of our $20,000 budget for 2012/3 programs. Doubtless, your contribution is key in enabling us to deliver on our mission and helps build the future of a whole country, Zimbabwe. Our students are deeply grateful to you for your incredible support.

We are pleased to report that we have accomplished all of our goals for the 2012/3 programs cycle. In the past year we:

• Trained a spirited and engaged team of sixteen mentors who received intensive training to prepare them for their year-long commitment to train and mentor students on leadership and entrepreneurship.
• Refined our leadership and entrepreneurship training curriculum so that it adapts concepts developed by the world's leading scholars such as Ronald Heifetz, Richard Hackman and Marshall Ganz while simultaneously infusing locally specific approaches to teaching those concepts.
• Recruited, trained and mentored 320 students over the course of ten months.
• Supported students as they designed and launched community development projects. The impressive projects students are currently working on include:
  • Establishing a catering business in Mpopoma High School, which has an enrollment of 2,000 students. Lead Us Today students have recruited unemployed youth and arranged for them to receive catering lessons. Soon, they will open a canteen in the school that provides hot, nutritious meals to student and staff.
  • Building a culture of recycling in the Nkulumane community by partnering with a recycling company in Zimbabwe, the National Waste Collectors, which collects recyclable waste that students gather from schools in their area.
  • Making and selling educational toys that stimulate young children intellectually to Early Childhood Development programs in primary schools around Bulawayo.

Please take time to view the attached pictures that bring our progress to life.

Our 2012/3 programs cycle ends in July 2013. We are excited to see what students accomplish through their projects. Indeed, thanks to your increased support, we will accomplish twice this in our next programs cycle!

This report comes as we celebrate our 3-year anniversary, which is on May 29th. We have come a very long way since our founding and we are excited for what the future holds for us. We hope that you can continue to be part of us by supporting our work.

In June, we will extend our campaign to raise $25,000 for our 2013/4 programs cycle through GlobalGiving. I hope you can consider making another contribution on GlobalGiving by simply following this link and donating from as little as $10: http://goto.gg/12608.

Once more, thank you for your continued support!

With warm gratitude,

Dalumuzi Mhlanga

Founder and CEO