When I came up with the concept of “Cases 4 a Cause” during my first trip to Africa last December, I didn’t realize how quickly I would be forging new partnerships with educational institutions and other NGOs in the Kigali, Rwanda area. My consulting experience has equipped me with a lens for quantifying and measuring things that are seemingly subjective in nature, which is often absent in the social sector, and the opportunity to leverage that skill=set for social good has been challenging, exhausting, and logotherapeutic.
I decided to return to Kigali to fortify my existing relationships/partnerships with organizations here (like White Dove Global Prep, the Nyamirambo Women’s Center, and brainstorm sustainable tourism ideas with the brilliant Josephine Kakasi), but also to pick the brains of entrepreneurs, academics, and volunteers who are involved in sectors I see as integrally related to development (hospitality, education, entrepreneurship).
Rwanda’s explosive growth since 1994 (when one of, if not the most. heartbreaking violations of human rights in human history occurred), is an anomaly. The government stressed the importance of reconciliation (even though the perpetrators were guilty of monstrosities that arguably do not merit forgiveness), promoted technology (they’re one of few African countries with LTE networks), discouraged dependence on foreign aid that fosters dependence, and promoted education. One example of the unification is the “Umaganda” wherein all citizens participate in cleanup on the last Saturday of each month. The confluence of all of these initiatives produced a country that is one of, if not the most, developed countries in Africa.
Today I had the privilege of participating in a tour and meetings with the faculty and students of the Akilah Institute. The Akilah Institute is an all-girls university in Kigali founded in 2010 by American Elizabeth Dearborn-Hughes that provides young women with the opportunity to study business/entrepreneurship, IT, or hospitality. While each track is technically separate, the program offers an abundance of cross-functional extracurricular opportunities for students to learn together in an experiential way.
The students arrive on campus with varying degrees of English fluency, but after a strenuous two month “bridge program” (basically an academic bootcamp), they emerge confident in themselves and public speaking and fluent in English, which is particularly imperative for the 60% of students who specialize in hospitality (fun fact: Americans and alike aren’t known for being multilingual). They then decide in which of the three tracks they would like to specialize.
My tour guide was Divine Uwase, a second-year student who had already started her own tour outfit, “Sharama Tours”, and secured funding from people who believed in her unique approach to tourism, openness to feedback and sheer intellectual horsepower/gumption. She even gives back 10% of her proceeds to the Iramiro House, a respite for children afflicted with HIV and AIDS. She’s already conducted five trips and is entertaining up to 60 people per trip, many of whom are local. Her initial two trips were something of a travesty, but always seeking feedback and looking to improve, she fixed the chinks in her tour company’s armor and has amassed a satisfied and enthusiastic clientele. This program was cofounded with her classmates Latifa Umugwaneza and Ghislaine Munyandoha. Their accomplishments would be impressive regardless of age, but to think they’ve done all of this at an age when I was still trying to sneak into dive bars with poorly laminated identification is amazing. They’ve also combined digital marketing with their correspondence with tourists at the famous Hotel des Mille Collines (aka Hotel Rwanda) to not skip a beat when it comes to attaining prospective Check out @Sharama_etours on Instagram; you won’t be disappointed.
I got the opportunity to then speak with Jimy and Cosette, two awesome individuals who work in the careers department at Akilah. Jimy is a former captain of the Rwandan national rugby team, so I challenged him to neither a chugging contest nor an arm wrestle. Cosette is a 2018 graduate of Akilah. The two spoke about “Mindsky”, a proprietary program that Akilah uses to simplify the job and internship process for its students. Initially started as a LinkedIn-esque program open to the public, Akilah brought Mindsky in house to function as a job board on steroids, as employers had been using the program initially to seek out executive talent to little avail. Now that the program is used in-house, employers have a central repository to post their jobs, which saves them a ton of time and money in the job search process. Further, Jimy, Cosette, and crew will provide job/internship descriptions when a company hasn’t finalized them, and even perform preliminary screenings and interviews with students to handover a shortlist of 3-5 qualified students. Effectively, they do recruiters’ or headhunters’ jobs for them, and make Akilah a first stop for any company who wants to have the opportunity to market itself to 1000 qualified individuals and then only have to read the CVs of the 5 people who are the best fit for it. The stats speak for themselves: 100% of students secure an internship during their break, 85% are employed within 6 months of graduation, 200+ employers are in the Mindsky database (29 of which are new this year). Their career office also provides mock interview prep, connects students with executives via roundtable discussions, and leverages the alumni network as a support structure. Both Jimmy and Cosette were fascinating individuals with a visible passion for the dreams they create.
Finally, I had the privilege of meeting with two instructors from the business and entrepreneurship track. While the entire curriculum is great, their emphasis on actionable social entrepreneurship was beyond impressive. In addition to offering a course in social entrepreneurship, the students are encouraged to participate in extracurricular competitions in which they prototype and implement solutions to global issues and pitch them to business leaders and other evaluators. Students have to test out their ideas and adapt them to market demand to submit for consideration, which is a testament to the pragmatic approach that Akilah takes to education. While lofty aspirations and dreams are great, when they don’t materialize in tangible societal benefit, they’re merely pipe dreams. There is a misnomer that innovation and invention are synonymous. Innovation is actually the implementation of an idea, not the creation of it. If you’re wondering how seriously the students take these competitions, two teams even traveled to San Diego last year to pitch their concepts. One provided hydroponic systems and lessons on how to operate them to malnourished individuals and the other created an app for young women to ask questions related to reproductive health that they would be too bashful to ask their parents or neighborhood physicians. Despite aforementioned socioeconomic development, communal attitudes towards sexuality are still traditional/conservative. The school also provides an entrepreneurship fund to provide seed capital to concepts that are particularly creative.
While I typically ascribe to the mantra that “brevity is the soul of wit” the people at Akilah who were generous enough with their time to placate me with all my questions merit a writeup that speaks to how special they are. If I had to encapsulate them in two words, it would be “adaptability” and “feedback”. I’m currently enthralled with the book Lean Impact by Ann Mei Chang, a Stanford grad, former Google Exec, Chief Innovation Officer at USAID, and now Chief Innovation Officer on behalf of presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg (I’m sure I missed some other monumental accomplishments). While her work is a treasure trove of analysis into what does and doesn’t work in social impact, two concepts that I saw in action at Akilah were willingness to adapt and openness to feedback. With respect to adaptability, Divine has conformed her trips to the input of her customers, the career office transformed a “Linkedin” replica to an internal program that makes the job search so facile for the student body that it’s become its own recruiting tool. The contestants for the social entrepreneurship competition need to put plan to action in quick enough intervals that there’s no time for reverie. One of the most gratifying moments in my tour was the mutual recognition that just because you care about your solution doesn’t mean it addresses the root causes of the problem at hand. I knew I was in kindred spirits when we mutually acknowledged hat sometimes you need to take a step back, be pliable, and listen to the needs and concerns of your consumer to make the world a better place. Akilah Instittute is truly a bastion of equal opportunity, innovation, and inspiration, and I am beyond thankful for the opportunity to spend my first full weekday in Kigali learning from them. Thank you!