Alumni Reflection on Givitas
One of the biggest wins from the Mandela Washington Fellowship has been the network of leaders across the continent. I have benefited immensely from the networks I developed at my Leadership Institute, meeting Fellows from my home country, and from participation on the Regional Advisory Board. I believe that I will still benefit from this network for many more years to come and Givitas is one of the ways I see that happening.
The simplicity and genius of Givitas is that we can ask for and give help to the entire network of not just Fellows, but everyone associated with the Mandela Washington Fellowship. Since I started using Givitas, I have made several connections: I collaborated with two 2021 selected candidates in the month of August as well as received and offered professional and technical help more times than I can count.
The simple process and user interface of Givitas enables us to benefit from other people’s expertise and knowledge and have other people benefit from ours. While I might not necessarily have what someone is looking for, I can connect them to someone else in my network and solve their pain point, and that is the power of a network. Having more of us actively using Givitas will exponentially increase the benefits, so I would definitely encourage Fellowship Alumni and 2021 Selected Candidates who have not yet tried it to do so.
Written by Juliet Odhiambo, 2018 Fellowship Alumna from Kenya. Edited by Chris McKeown and Charlotte Renfield-Miller.
The Mandela Washington Fellowship is a program of the U.S. Department of State with funding provided by the U.S. Government and administered by IREX. The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of the U.S. Government.
Fellowship Alumni and selected candidates for 2021 who are interested in learning more about Givitas are encouraged to explore it through the Fellowship Portal.
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James Papy Kwabo
2019 Fellowship Alumnus, Liberia