7 Years of Teaching: The Networking Event

(by Anoushka Patel)

During the three weeks that we were in Nairobi, we set a day aside for the largely anticipated networking day event. It was meant to be a fun filled day in which students can get a break from the classroom and topics such as cash flows, which is unbelievably hard to make fun. It is also held so that the students from the two different sites get to interact with other students in their industries with the aim possibly making feasible partnerships or just to share ideas. We also invited students who participated in the previous years to come share their experiences, inspire the new class and give them a few words of encouragement. Now, for those of you who have ever planned an event, be it frosh or camp, the first thing on the agenda is always ICEBREAKERS. Then again, those of you who actually have Kenyan friends would know that’s there is absolutely no point in doing that. All you need is a beat. It doesn’t have to be music, it can be a drum roll on a table or even the likes of my terrible singing but that will be enough to bring them together to bust a move on the dance floor. We tried the human knot game, but that quickly turned onto one big dance session! And boy can Kenyans dance!

We then sat down and heard a very inspirational speech from a graduate in the 2007 class who managed, against all odds to start her  bakery. Winifred is the symbol of courage and hard work and has inspired everyone one of us in that room to never give up and to dream big.

Then came the fun part - the activities! We first divided all the students into groups depending on the industry they were in and made them rotate through different stations. The first station was the marshmallow game in which students were asked to build a tower with 20 spaghetti strands and had to fasten a marshmallow on the top of it. The team with the tallest freestanding tower won. The idea behind the game was to facilitate team work and to encourage prototyping. It was also used as a symbol to never give up, and to get back up when you fall. The students really worked well together and a few even came up with great structures.

Another game we played was more along the lines of a design thinking workshop. We gave the students 5 completely random and somewhat useless items such as a hockey stick(Canadian pride), and asked them to think of 5 different businesses we could start with those items. It was a hard one, but after discussing and building on each others ideas, the students really started to tap into their creative zones and came up with some phenomenal ideas.

In the next workshop we played the word game. The students were split into groups of three and were each given a word that they had to illustrate on sheets of drawing paper. There were no restrictions when it came to the illustrations and students could use markers and post it notes, some even used mud and grass to get their point across. For instance, one of the words that were given to them was ‘hope’ and the illustrations they came up with were outstanding. One team used a small plant and drew rain to symbolize hope, strength and growth.

Another game we used to reinforce some of the concepts we learned in class was the target market game. Each group had to come up one business and figure out the target market for that business. While doing target market in class, all of us really tried to reinforce the idea of analyzing your target customers by telling a story about their typical day. We even went as far as creating a character and naming it to make it seem more life like. This workshop really tried to reinforce this type of thinking and all the groups did great.

All in all, it was a fabulous day filed with laughter, new friendships, renewed business ideas and a box full of pili pili rice J