Today, I?d like to announce that Dalumuzi Mhlanga is one of three winners of the 2011 College Social Innovator Contest?hosted jointly by the Harvard College Social Innovation Collaborative and the Common Good column at Forbes.com. The following winning essay is written by Mhlanga, an undergraduate student at Harvard College (?13) and founder of Lead Us Today, a non-profit organization in Zimbabwe whose mission is to inspire, mobilize and empower young people to work together beyond socioeconomic barriers so that they can lead community development efforts.
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One lonely night when I was fifteen, I sat on my bed, surrounded by the few clothes that I owned. As I tried on each of my ?outfits?, I looked at my image in the mirror and rated myself on a scale of one to ten. I never scored myself above three. I felt worthless. For me, this was an exercise in assigning my value to society. Fortunately, a few hours later that night, I pondered why I was doing this to degrade myself. I snapped out of it in that moment. For how much longer was I going to value myself based on my family?s material circumstances, which I could do little to change at that time? For how much longer was I going to brood over my situation? That night, I vowed to live life based on what I could contribute to the world and not on what value I perceived to be projected onto me by others.
This experience has inspired me to empower young people to view themselves as possessing the agency and responsibility to make a difference in their communities instead of brooding over their material, social or political circumstances. I consider this to be particularly important in my country, Zimbabwe, as young people are overwhelmed by a 95% unemployment rate and an unstable political environment, which have forced one in four Zimbabweans to live outside the country. I am intent on addressing the despair, despondency and lack of personal and collective responsibility among young people to address their own challenges and those of their communities in Zimbabwe.
This issue is particularly important for three main reasons: First, in Zimbabwe and Africa, there is need for interventions that address both the immediate needs of communities (such as the need for clean water) and the critical long-term need for building Africans? capacity to address their immediate challenges. This long-term need is built on the assumption that capacity can be built; that is, Africans can assume and exercise responsibility in addressing their own challenges ? it is important that Africans know that. I also believe that democratization cannot be achieved only through setting up mechanisms and institutions such as elections and parliament. Equally important, citizens need to actively participate in determining their livelihoods through active civic engagement. Unless young people believe that they can assume and exercise their responsibilities in shaping a democratic society invested in building its capacity for future progress, then the development of Africa is somewhat doomed. This is why addressing young people?s senses of despair, despondency and lack of responsibility is important.
Last year, I founded a nonprofit organization in Zimbabwe, Lead Us Today (LUT), whose mission is to inspire, mobilize and empower young people to work together beyond socioeconomic barriers so that they can lead community development efforts. At the core of our work is the ?community learning center?, a space that brings together community members so that they grapple with and address their problematic realities. This center is important as it enables the necessary learning for communities to build capacity. LUT empowers young people to lead learning processes through a leadership-training program in which we explore issues such as adaptive social change and community mobilizing. The students design and implement projects that address problematic realities with community members. We also work with students and communities in a fashion business, which leverages the talent of fashion designers and tailors in the communities. Through the sale of the clothing products, Lead Us Today builds student?s business skills, empowers local communities economically and ensures its financial sustainability. Indeed, all these various activities are uniquely designed to build young people?s and communities? capacity through various learning opportunities.
In eighteen months, we have provided leadership-training to 118 students from eight high schools in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe. Each school is home to a community learning center, all of which have mobilized over 400 community members to design and implement sixteen community development projects such as a fruit and vegetable garden benefiting HIV/AIDS patients with nutritional needs and sanitation campaigns orchestrated in partnership with corporations that have provided rubbish bins. Students in our program have invested over 15,000 hours in five communities and impacted close to 1,200 people. We have also provided internships for 20 students at the country?s top law firms and cultural centers. ?????? In my work with Lead Us Today, we are empowering young people to believe that they can and should make a difference, that the responsibility to do so lies in them. Through our work, we are working diligently towards creating a generation of engaged and socially responsible citizens in Africa and Zimbabwe who are spearheading development efforts today and will continue to do so in the future.
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