{"id":93,"date":"2017-10-01T22:57:21","date_gmt":"2017-10-01T22:57:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/indyhickman\/?p=93"},"modified":"2017-10-01T23:12:16","modified_gmt":"2017-10-01T23:12:16","slug":"new-and-lasting-idols","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/indyhickman\/new-and-lasting-idols\/","title":{"rendered":"New Idols"},"content":{"rendered":"

One question has been asked repeatedly to me since my return to the States, and it gave me a lot of trouble at first. What was the most amazing part?<\/em> It hasn\u2019t only been posed by friends and family as a first dive into hearing about the experience, but also in other, deeper and more vocationally reflective forms such as What are you going to hold onto (or remember) the most?<\/em> Or something along these lines. And it was difficult to sort out\u2014how do you value travel versus the cultural experience of living somewhere completely different versus the impact of the work versus the inner development? I could answer the question by mentioning these general categories, but it lingered with me for awhile. What will I hold on to? What really changed me?<\/p>\n

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8 people enjoying the view in Sipi Falls<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Only recently has the answer become obvious: the people. The people changed me. Not only individuals I closely worked with, communicated with, or even met (though they drove this realization); but also the people that filled the streets and were apart of the background. The people that sometimes made me feel like more of an outsider than I\u2019ve ever felt when walking down the street trying to smile at the stares and yells of \u201cHey mzungu!\u201d The people that filled the streets with indescribable energy and congeniality. The people that crowded to meet me at schools due to my skin color. The people that welcomed me into their homes and communities with more warmth than I\u2019ve ever experienced from stranger.<\/p>\n

But, like I mentioned, more than anything I\u2019ll be pulled to remember the people Lauren and I met and worked with. I was inspired by American social entrepreneurs that had left careers that I had been dreaming about in favor of pursuing social impact in Uganda, but some interactions with local change makers left me in awe.<\/p>\n

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Steve, an inspiring social entrepreneur who started a coffee tour business to bring jobs and attention to widows in the Sipi Falls, showing us how to roast coffee beans<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

One school that we visited early in the in-field period provided me my first experience of this. We were meeting with Cathy, the teacher in charge of the school\u2019s Teach A Man To Fish program, and were immediately taken aback by her assertiveness and confidence. This was shown through things as diverse as calling out the exact amount of minutes we were late to going into confident detail about different menstrual care product options during our interview. We loved her from the first moment of meeting her. We first were introduced to the whole team of students, who gave us a demonstration of the donut making business. Lauren and I were beaming during it from the excitement of realizing that these programs really work, the impressiveness and professionalism of the students running the school business, and the kindness that had been shown to us\u2014and this was before sitting down with Cathy for the interview.<\/p>\n

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A group photo with Cathy’s school business team<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

We expected simplicity from the school business that we could adapt and improve (I mean, we were the ones who had traveled from Silicon Valley to introduce a new program to the TAMTF schools right?), but were shocked to find she had been pursuing our project of having the schools sell social impact products, specifically sanitary pads, within her TAMTF program for years. Not only had she pursued the initiative, but she had implemented complexities to the school business that we never imagined we\u2019d be able to achieve. She had created a stock-based company that the students utilize to raise funds for the business and divide profits. She had created a partnership with an Asian school with a similar program to exchange products and therefore increase each schools market\u2026internationally. At one point, we laughed and decided to lay down the entirety of our project in front of her for her advice and critique. Cathy wasn\u2019t a research subject; she was a mentor. She was a young teacher, who also sat on multiple national boards and worked with refugees, looking to change the world. I mentioned in a past blog post that part of the reason I chose the fellowship was because I felt like I had found likeminded peers, unhappy with the system in the other fellows. Cathy epitomized that call to action, and angry response, but she aggressively pursued that change without the resources, privileges, and gifts we had been given to help us start our mission. Maybe pursuing social impact felt at times risky for me, or felt like I had to give up things to go down this different path, but here was an example of what being a social entrepreneur really meant. A win-at-all-cost individual willing to go down a million different paths in order to change the world. Someone that truly knows the problem, the injustice, and what\u2019s at stake more than I ever could.<\/p>\n

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Students demonstrating their donut-making school business<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This experience has given me an interesting, big-picture perspective of the social enterprise movement as well. I had been admiring the people back in the United States that were willing to dedicate time and resources toward making a difference in the world, but maybe these shouldn\u2019t be my idols\u2014and definitely shouldn\u2019t be who I think about when I think of the social enterprise movement. It\u2019s phenomenal what these people with resources do in order to help push the world in the right direction, but it\u2019s also easy. Dedicating a couple hours, a week, a month, a small percentage of your disposable income to social impact is easy! It requires caring and seeking change, but that is<\/em> the easy part. There are others, such as Cathy, fighting and scrambling to create change every day. They aren\u2019t leveraging the Silicon Valley innovative thinking or have business models reviewed by individuals that started this company and sold that one, but they don\u2019t need that either. They\u2019re just going to keep fighting at all costs and through all outlets regardless of who offers their advice time or money. Whether two Santa Clara students come to discuss the new initiative they\u2019ve been planning or if they stay at home. I feel like I\u2019ve been putting in an incredible amount of time working on the Action Research and perfecting the recommendation and market analysis for TAMTF\u2019s business development but realistically have I? I can turn off the switch anytime I want; I pursue other activities, think about other things, and interview for other career paths.<\/p>\n

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Inside the TAMTF office on our last day. A shot of Lauren and Jordan, one of our managers, hard at work<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It\u2019s been a roundabout way to get there but I think my point is this: I need to idolize the change makers on the ground floor of the movement, seek to empower their solutions, and never feel superior or important because of donating a fraction of time or effort or money to this movement. The complexity has overwhelmed me, and frustrated me, like little else has, but getting to decide to work toward change or not is possibly the biggest privilege I have. There are an amazing amount of local innovators and activists that are the most important layer of this movement, and they are the important drivers. Cathy was just one example of the many people rethinking the system that have I\u2019ve had the privilege to meet and let change the way I view the world and my role within it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One question has been asked repeatedly to me since my return to the States, and it gave me a lot of trouble at first. What was the most amazing part? It hasn\u2019t only been posed by friends and family as a first dive into hearing about the experience, but also in other, deeper and more … Continue reading New Idols<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2037,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"qubely_global_settings":"","qubely_interactions":"","kk_blocks_editor_width":"","_kiokenblocks_attr":"","_kiokenblocks_dimensions":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-93","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"gutentor_comment":0,"qubely_featured_image_url":null,"qubely_author":{"display_name":"indyhickman","author_link":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/indyhickman\/author\/indyhickman\/"},"qubely_comment":0,"qubely_category":"Uncategorized<\/a>","qubely_excerpt":"One question has been asked repeatedly to me since my return to the States, and it gave me a lot of trouble at first. What was the most amazing part? It hasn\u2019t only been posed by friends and family as a first dive into hearing about the experience, but also in other, deeper and more…","post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/indyhickman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/indyhickman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/indyhickman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/indyhickman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2037"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/indyhickman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=93"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/indyhickman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":102,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/indyhickman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93\/revisions\/102"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/indyhickman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=93"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/indyhickman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=93"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.scu.edu\/indyhickman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=93"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}