YALI Reunions Week: our most inspiring Zoom calls yet
Throughout the Presidential Precinct’s nearly ten-year history, we have maintained our belief that program participants are not just members of our community for the duration of their physical stay. We’ve known that the impact of our programming, by the hands of our alumni, is to be found years beyond the conclusion of curricula in Charlottesville or Williamsburg. We talk about our alumni as future national leaders, and we mean it.
Our list of program alumni has surpassed 1,000, and social media has afforded some opportunities to stay in touch. WhatsApp chat groups originally created for logistical reminders – “the bus to Morven leaves in five minutes!!” or “don’t forget to complete your weekly program evaluation!” – now ebb and flow with the occasional “remember when?!” or news of a recent, well deserved recognition.
And yet, until this past month, we had never formally organized a program reunion. March 15 – 23 marked our first ever “Mandela Washington Fellowship Alumni Reunions Week”, packed with individual Zoom calls for each of our six Mandela Washington Fellowship cohorts.
Updates from Fellowship Alumni ranged from marriages and the recent birth of children to career changes, new degree programs, and reports from ongoing political campaigns. Whether Alumni were two or six years out from the end of their Fellowship, each one of them had exciting and inspiring news to share. In their own words:
“When I look now and think about where I am … I know that
those weeks together changed my life for the better.”
– Nozipho Dlali, 2018 Fellowship Alumna, South
Africa
“The impact that the Precinct; the connection that we
had; is something that is immeasurable.”
– Chris Fonye, 2017 Fellowship Alumnus, Cameroon
“Thanks to the Presidential Precinct, I started a
nonprofit that supports children with Cerebal Palsy in Nigeria. We have since
enrolled about 100 kids with CP in school.”
– Tobiloba Ajayi, 2016 Fellowship Alumna, Nigeria
“We never used to talk as a continent. This [Fellowship] was
the first time I’d been somewhere that more than two countries we represented
in the same place!”
– Isabel Bueio, 2014 Fellowship Alumna, Angola
Muazu Modu, a 2018 Fellowship Alumnus from Nigeria, reflected on coming to the Presidential Precinct less than a year after Charlottesville “Unite the Right” rallies in August of 2017. “I came to understand that the people of Charlottesville were different than what I had heard on the news.” Muazu has since made it a priority in his anti-corruption work to let people tell their own stories.
After his time at the Presidential Precinct, Muazu wasted no time getting to work. “I started looking at how I could start my own organization after the Fellowship experience. I met with a lot of young people to figure out how to start something new in a region with a lot of corruption. So we came up with a brand new organization focused on transparency and organization.” Since then, as CEO of the Spotlight NG, Muazu was recognized as a winner of the Youth Innovation Challenge on Democracy and Governance in Africa.
Sally Gandar, Fellowship Alumna from South Africa, brought cheer to our class of 2017 reunion with an introduction to her baby son Noah. She also explained the Fellowship’s role in her latest position as Head of Advocacy for a Cape Town-based NGO. “One thing that really informed the career moves after the PP was learning about how lobbying and advocacy is done in the states. We have a long way to go here in SA but one of my favorite things is parliamentary advocacy. I’ve had some really great successes.”
Also a 2017 Fellowship Alum, Tem Mbuh is a lawyer working with underrepresented incarcerated individuals in Cameroon. He shared that his “niche in criminal justice” became clear soon after the 2017 Fellowship: “The Precinct helped me in my soul searching to see where my interests really were and where I could make a difference.” Tem’s time at the Precinct came just as tensions were peaking between the Cameroonian government and Ambazonian separatists, conflict that has since created a ruthless civil war in Cameroon.
Tem admitted feeling helpless as he began his Fellowship, unsure of his individual role in the face of such pervasive conflict, but by the time of this class reunion, he had raised over $1 million with local organizations dealing with community peace building. Tem said, earnestly, “It’s the proudest thing I’ve ever done. Seeing schools being built, kids going back to school, it’s the biggest thing I’ve ever done in my life. I have the Precinct to thank for that and many friends here have contributed ideas.”
We could write a book’s worth of exciting updates. Great news also came from Safiya Nuhu, 2014 Fellowship Alumna, who proudly announced her recent appointment as the Nigerian Ambassador to Romania. Many agreed, our next gathering of the 2014 class may have to be in Bucharest!
Once our Precinct staff and Fellows made it past the shock of how much time had gone by since our last group conversations, we all agreed that reunions must become a more regular occurrence. As we continue to cheer one another on in exciting career moves and growing families, the global community built around this Mandela Washington Fellowship stands ever-stalwart, in some way or another fueling each of these accomplishments.
The Precinct’s message to Fellows remains simple. You inspire us. You have taught us just as much as we could ever dream of teaching you. And we are grateful, every day, for the impact that each of you are leading in communities around the world. Thank you, Fellows. We’ll get to work on the next “reunions week” soon!
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The Mandela Washington Fellowship for Young African Leaders is a program of the U.S. Department of State with funding provided by the U.S. Government and administered by IREX. The Presidential Precinct is a sub-grantee of IREX and is implementing a U.S.-based Leadership Institute as a part of the Fellowship. For more information about the Mandela Washington Fellowship, please visit the Fellowship’s website at www.mandelawashingtonfellowship.org
