It was in 1999, the year I was about to finish my primary education, when I first began to hear about the strikes and demonstrations at Universities. Students were striking to pressure the government into increasing their student loan amounts so that they had more money. Sometimes the students destroyed University property and other times they were injured as a result of striking. Often I saw universities closed due to these strikes and even in February this year, (2011) the University of Dar es Salaam was forced to close due to students demanding an increase in their student loans.
In 2008, my first year at Mzumbe University, I came up with the idea of setting up The Achievers’ Club. I realized that the real problem for my fellow students was not the government student loan but the availability of money itself – many students believe they have no other option but to depend on the government for their money and when the government fails to provide them with money on time, they simply have no means of survival. Many of my fellow students come from poor families like me, so they resort to striking by putting pressure on the government into giving them money so that they can at least survive living at the University.
The purpose of The Achievers Club is to create a different source of income so that when one source is in crisis, the other source will compensate it. This involves training students to develop their entrepreneurial skills and encouraging them to think about investing and engaging in various businesses while they continue to study. The vision for The Achievers’ Club is to have a student-owned company at every University in Tanzania and other east African nations. This company can either be medium or large as long as the students are the key shareholders. Students invest the amount of their government loan into the company and many of them take casual jobs within these companies.
Our mission is to provide a forum where all university students can discuss important issues for our nation and give their opinion. We continue to face a lot of challenges within this club – many people have asked me to stop running the club because I am from a poor family and they believe that I cannot do something that needs lots of money to implement. However I still believe that it is ideas that change our lives, not money, despite it being useful.
In 2010, we officially began our club events and we held several seminars on entrepreneurship, launching book readings and sharing business and life skills. Though this usually requires money, with some influencing, we managed to run these workshops at zero cost. In 2010 I met with Pamela from Tanzania Global Development Learning Centre and she told me about the LIW Leaders of Change video conferences. I attended every one of the series which included dialogue, learning and application of leadership tools. As a result of these programs, I have seen growth everyday in myself, my life and my club.
On another level, I have learnt a lot of lessons; how to deal with adversity, empowering women, leading yourself with purpose, vision and values, cross-cultural leadership, stakeholder management and creating a leadership architecture. Each of the video conference programs made me stronger and more mature in leading my organisation. My biggest learning is that in order to build my organisation and determine its leadership architecture, I must take responsibility as the builder to ensure that those who are going to ‘live’ in the organisation are safe and that they enjoy their life.
During the video conferences, we discussed the principles of using the 3Ws and the 3Cs to create the right condition for the success of others. These tools helped us to move from one step to another in January 2011 when we decided to open a student microfinance institution. These tools continue to help us as we continue to ask ourselves; ‘what do we want to achieve, where are we now and what next? Using this process led me to realise that in order to run the organization effectively, I need to further my development so I attended another videoconference course run by the Tokyo development learning center, called Microfinance training of trainer (MFTOT). At the end of this course, I am going to teach my fellow students the content and we hope to begin operating our microfinance institution through member contribution and further donations.
We have now expanded to other universities like SUA,and the University of Dar es Salaam. We hope to secure sponsorship in the future from people who are interested in building our community. Using the skills I learnt from LIW, I am determined to bring about these changes and larger changes in the future.
My experience of learning leadership tools has enabled me to realise that my options are limitless. There are not many students in Tanzania who interact with others in the global community and the reason for this, they say, is lack of money. I refuse to believe this and choose to ignore it as I think that if I have an idea I can manage.
As a result of the video conferences, I am taking the lead in changing people’s perspective towards poverty by helping them to see it as less of a barrier. I decided to join AISEC Tanzania 2009 and this involved me taking an internship in Kenya as a Volunteer at Mathare Youth Association (MYSA). It was here that I had the opportunity to network with lots of students from China, Japan, Holland, Britain, U.S.A, Egypt, Slovenia, Nigeria, Kenya and Germany. When I returned home, many students began to question: ‘well if Deo from a poor family can manage to go abroad for an internship, why can’t I? So, nowadays lots of student go abroad for internships to places like India and other parts of the world far away from Tanzania.
Current am Running my own Company Mikono business consult and our Vision is To become a leading company in the field of business consultation, practical business education, and business media in Africa. I real see my promising future and we are real doing great In east Africa(Tanzania and Kenya) and we real practice the concept of self responsibility, I real believe that No one is answer in My life except myself, Don’t try to surrender your life to other people and I real believe that we are inter-depend each other.
Currently we are the leading E-marketing company in East Africa,we do have more than 30,000 emails data base of C.EO’s,COO’s,CFO’s,Head of departments in various organization and companies here in Daresalaam Kilimanjaro,Arusha and Mwanza and our mail list still growing up very fast everyday.
Also we conduct weekly motivational seminar/training in five stars hotel here in East Africa, and other great stuffs like we own our own magazine known as ACHIEVERS MAGAZINE,etc.
I love Tanzania
Deogratius Kilawe
General manager
Mikono Business consult
+255717109362
www.mikono.bizsss
duh picha kaiendea photoshop kuweka msisitizo wa story yake hahahah,me tie tu lol
ReplyDelete