Cultural Stereotypes

So the 2nd day went by as quickly as the sleep I've been getting in Nairobi (endless works had kept me up late at night unfortunately.)

We arrived early at 9am and we prepped until classes started at 10am.

It's interesting in our concept of stereotyping cultures. The few days that we had spent here have taught us what "African time" means-- if you want someone to arrive promptly at, for say, 9am, you'd tell them to arrive at 8:30am. To combat this concept, we had purposefully start off our morning with a Q+A (unstructured), in hope to combat this cultural norm.

But interestingly, perhaps as results of setting group norms, expectations, or even as simple as respect, the youths surprisingly arrived at ten to 10am. Another surprise came when Patrick, one of the four youths with the winning proposal, came into the door and showed us his homework-- 4 assigned pages fully completed. We really didn't expect much of these youths will actually do their homework (perhaps we are thinking of ourselves in Canada). Are stereotypes always true? Of course not.

We had a finance workshop today with Dr Waema-- a finance professor/ banker from the Catholic University of Eastern Africa in Nairobi. He commented of how pleased he was with our choice of location-- somewhere convenient to our participants, and somewhere which reflected the current hardships-- not anywhere fancy, intimidating, which further exaggerated the class differences. He talked on for about two and a half hours, and surprising the youths were listening sincerely, taking notes, and fully participating. This is so unlike any university lectures that I've ever sat on. To sum up Dr. Waema's charismatic speech, "opportunities is all that are needed, and poverty is in our hands to eliminate."

On a side note, we hope to quantify our education successes. We gave the youths a test today and we are going to give the same test by the end of our project, in hope for some significant improvements. The results were not bad: mean-- 63%; median-- 57%. But of course, we hope that in about two weeks time, everyone will be in the 90's range-- or at least that's what all teachers hope in every class that they teach.

And for myself, Dr. Waema discussed his interest in researching about cultural management practices-- and specifically in African Management characteristics (I'm sure we've heard of the Japanese Management, North American management etc.) And suddenly I'm thinking: that will be SOOOO interesting! Perhaps I'll look into it, and see if I can find myself another excuse to come to this amazing continent! (And plus, it's management research; something I'm truly excited about!)


Posted by Eiston Lo

Kickoff!

The day has come finally-- 1st day-- the day which kicked off this entire program that we've all put countless hours in.

I have to admit that I was quite nervous in taking the responsibility of facilitating the 1st workshop for the program. First days on any type of classroom delivery are so critical in getting the audience involved and entirely setting the tone going forward. A successful first day can make the entire program a success. A failed first day can torpedo the entire program.

Also, having checked out the "classroom"yesterday-- a meeting room that we Canadians would feel that fit maximum ten people but claimed by the youths to being capable of fitting 30 people, had got me quite nervous. Not only the size of the room was a concern (we were expecting about 20 students plus our team which adds up to about 27 people), I fear the Kenyan youths' English level, the amount of participation, and perhaps even a cultural shock to have foreigners who may be much younger than themselves to be the 'teachers'.

Despite all my fear and apprehension, the day went really well. I was absolutely amazed at the youths' participation, their English level, and how welcoming they are to us. We had a lot of great discussion as to what social entrepreneurship may mean (the first workshop was the discussion of social entrepreneurship and introduction to the business plan), and I was in awe at how much they shared their personal lives with us.

I remember one student would use the word 'ferocious' in his conversation, and another would let us know that the concept of 'social valued business' -- a watered-down term that Josie and I had thought of for the youths-- were called 'social responsibility.' Precisely the 'higher' level term and concept that we had hoped to convey to them.

And then we had students who volunteered to read out some paragraphs from our resource booklet. It really warmed my heart to know that this resouce booklet that our whole team had put 600+ hours in had really paid off. We went through editions and editions of this approximately 300 pages booklet to ensure that the language was appropriate. And when they volunteered to read and participate, my heart just died for them.

They were also really thankful for our presence, and they re-enforced my belief that education and sharing of knowledge is very important. And I guess, the youths today had made me feel much better for all the things that I sacrificed for this project (financially and other opportunities otherwise.) Our sharing knowledge at our discussion today was just amazing-- that i dont really know how to put it in words.

I have to admit that today went really really smoothly. And for myself, i had a great time, and from their smiles and ethusiastic participation, I'm convinced that they did also.

I'm so looking forward to the next 16 days!


Posted by Eiston Lo