Tag: International Development

Yoda#7: Empowering Survivors to End Sexual Violence

With programs in Kenya and Zambia, Freely in Hope equips survivors and advocates to lead in ending the cycle of sexual violence. Freely in Hope has a three-tiered program of holistic education (through scholarships), leadership development, and storytelling platforms.

We recently interviewed Nikole Lim, the International Director and founder of nonprofit Freely in Hope.  With programs in Kenya and Zambia, Freely in Hope equips survivors and advocates to lead in ending the cycle of sexual violence. Freely in Hope has a three-tiered program of holistic education (through scholarships), leadership development, and storytelling platforms. Nikole founded Freely in Hope at age 20, and as its International Director, she leads the organization’s staff development, fundraising, and implementation of new program initiatives.

Nikole is releasing her first book, Liberation Is Here: Women Uncovering Hope in a Broken World, on September 22nd, available for pre-order here.

Q: What inspired you to start Freely in Hope?

As a documentary filmmaker, I traveled in and out of countries to meet people briefly to collect stories for my short-term assignments. I befriended women who were survivors of sexual violence (SV) in Kenya, where I filmed my thesis film (I was in a college program for film production), and observed these women fighting against cultural and familial oppression simply for being born a girl, in order to go to school. All these women desired was to use their education to ensure other girls vulnerable to SV wouldn’t endure the same pain. I began to observe a correlation between SV and the lack of access to education. 

As I edited my thesis documentary film, I felt God asking me, what are you going to do about it? The film I was making would build awareness of SV through storytelling, but simply telling their stories was not enough. I was so inspired by the beauty, compassion and community orientation of their dreams, that I wanted to contribute tangibly to helping achieve them. I started to think about founding a nonprofit for this purpose, but I didn’t know how to start one from scratch. I had to Google it. And this was the beginning of Freely in Hope. 

Q: How has Freely in Hope evolved over time?

We began by providing scholarships for a couple of girls to attend high school and university. After receiving their first scholarships, these girls rose to the top of their class. We soon began supporting other survivors. The girls shared that, now that they were in school, they realized the power of their voices and they wanted to educate their communities about SV prevention. They wanted to become leaders in the fight for justice. We built out our programs into the three tiers that we have now, based on their guidance, feedback, and dreams. We pride ourselves as being an organization for survivors, led by survivors, designed by survivors. All of our program staff are survivors of SV. We hope to build a strong support system for young women who believe that they can transform systems of oppression into places of freedom and liberation for all women. 

Q: What do you find fulfilling about your work? 

Our survivors, both scholars and staff, recognize the power of their voice. These are huge milestones when they lead a meeting for the first time, tell their story for the first time, or recognize for the first time how a trigger was connected to a past trauma. It is incredibly fulfilling to observe how these moments lead towards transformation.

When they first join our program, many survivors can’t even say their own names because there’s so much shame and trauma attached to their identities due to rape, incest, and violence. They lost a sense of who they were. Through Freely in Hope, they go through a process to reclaim their identities, to the point that they can say their names publicly and tell their stories in front of others.

Q: What challenges have you encountered in your work?

The biggest turning point in my leadership was when I burned out in my third year with Freely in Hope. I felt it was personally up to me to pursue this mission of ending sexual violence, and that I had to control all our organizational outcomes in order to succeed. I ended up hospitalized in Zambia due to the stress: I was physically ill, unable to sleep, and had migraines.

In the hospital I came to terms with my lack of control. I wasn’t God. I also realized that I was suffering from secondary PTSD and through my recovery, I began to recognize that the community already knows the solutions they need and my role is to leverage the community’s knowledge and support system, and not to control and dictate.

Nikole Lim

Q: What do you wish you had known before you started Freely in Hope? 

I wish I had known how hard it would have been. Actually, I retract that. If I had known, I would have not done it and missed out on all the gifts of this work. Where there is pain, suffering and darkness, there’s an abundance of light, hope and healing. You can’t properly experience light without experiencing the darkness.

More practically, I wish I had more academic knowledge about nonprofit management and creation. But as a result, I’ve had to rely more on the wisdom of survivors which is what makes our programs incredible—beyond any theories I could apply. 

Q: How do you measure your success?

My measurement of how we’re doing is based on our survivors’ experiences and our staff perspectives on how we’re impacting our community, and not as much focused on what our donors think or what activities have the most fundraising potential. Ultimately we gauge our success on being attentive to the survivors’ needs and implementing their ideas.

Q: How do you elicit honest feedback from the survivors?

It’s taken us a long time to build a culture of trust. We have two retreats a year to bring all girls together with our staff. Our scholars fill out program assessments and have opportunities to share feedback with staff members. We also have an anonymous feedback system. 

Q: What are you doing to take care of yourself during this time of COVID? What gives you joy?

In the first week of sheltering in place, there were constant calls because everything was blowing up. I burnt out. So now I only schedule 3-4 calls per day.  I start the day with a morning meditation and I take a mid-day yoga break. At the end of my work day, I do some cardio kickboxing as my workout, which gives me joy and energy. I then cook dinner for my family, which is a replenishing therapeutic act of service and gets me away from my computer. I take the night off and try to maintain work / life separation.

Joy is about experiencing the gifts of the day – as mundane as they may be. At night, I sit in silence and solitude to pray the Daily Examen, an Ignatian spiritual exercise. Through the Examen, I observe my gratitudes for the day and write them down. I also observe the desolations I felt during the day and bring them to God in prayer.

Q: Life lessons learned: Any other general advice you’d like to share about careers? 

  • Put people first. Lead with compassion and empathy. Learn to listen to the voices of your community to inform your leadership. Move into this space with an open heart. What you learn in academia and articles can supplement your work, but the people you’re serving know best. Come up with a community-oriented solution – this is what justice looks like. Share power, ideas and resources.
  • Understand how culture and family systems and trauma can impede change. Holistically serve staff and beneficiaries so that the change can evolve from the community. As a leader in social impact the change doesn’t come from you. The “social” in “social impact” at its core implies the ownership and involvement of the community.

Featured Yoda#3: CEO of Social Enterprise Providing Assistive Products for People with Disabilities

Our third featured social impact yoda is Keoke King, who is co-founder and CEO of Participant Assistive Products, a social enterprise which designs and produces wheel chairs, strollers, and other assistive products for people with disabilities globally. They are also currently running a WeFunder campaign to provide wheel chairs for kids around the world, if you’d like to support their work!

Keoke, thanks so much for being willing to share about your career path with us. Please start by telling us about your current role working in social impact at your organization, Participant Assistive Products.

I am co-founder and CEO of Participant Assistive Products. We have been bootstrapping for 2 years and have completed 9 iterations of our prototype, a wheelchair for children in lower income countries. My day-to-day involves a lot of Q&A with investors, coordinating our R&D team, and marketing. We have letters of intent for ~4,000 units and have raised about $400k. It looks like we will have production in May and then my role will shift towards sales and building the team.

We chose to start Participant now because this is a pivotal time in the global story of people with disabilities. Because of aging and chronic disease, the population is doubling. At the same time, many nations are adding assistive technology to their national healthcare systems, so there is a viable market opportunity. And, new technologies are opening affordable solutions. All this put a sparkle in my entrepreneurial eye and we set out to democratize assistive products so that none are left behind.

Please briefly share your career path prior to Participant.

I’ve been working in the disability field since I finished my MBA 10 years ago. My work has taken me to many corners of the world, and I have had the opportunity to work with many passionate and highly skilled people. I’ve worked on bigger projects in Indonesia, Nicaragua, and Georgia. I’ve always worked in small companies with less than 50 employees and in dynamic market environments. I’m familiar with a startup environment where decisions are made quickly, and staying in my specialty isn’t practical because there are many different needful things. I really enjoy the marketing and sales aspects of being an entrepreneur, especially where they overlap with product development and teasing out user needs.

What do you find fulfilling about your work? Why did you start Participant?

People with disabilities are the largest minority group on the planet and often the most overlooked. At the same time, working in this space is exhilarating because there are exceptional outcomes available with very little input. One of my favorite moments was following along on a motorcycle behind a guy named Purnomo. He lives uphill on a volcano in Indonesia and rides his wheelchair down to his artist studio. With that income, he has bought his family home, and his kids are on track for lives filled with opportunities in rapidly growing economy. This is a very different story line than that of the 70 million people who need a wheelchair and don’t have one. It is next to impossible for them to be productive. And in otherwise challenging situations, their families often don’t fare well versus the average. I’m delighted to see people achieve so much after becoming mobile and going where they want. With our new for-profit company, we expect the added delight of disrupting our little part of the American medical device industrial complex. It is bent towards extracting dollars from the government, not serving users. Our work abroad, where Medicare doesn’t exist, gives us an advantage in reimagining a lean supply chain that delivers high value to users.

What are the most important skills to succeed in your job? And in your career in general?

Is grit a skill? This work is exceptionally challenging, especially for someone with a preference for social enterprise versus traditional charity-oriented solutions. That’s because disability, even in ‘developed’ countries like ours, is either a charity or government-funded area. Up until recently, few lower-income country governments were buying assistive products for their people. The lack of local government leadership, lack of trained professional clinicians, and lack of funding has made solving problems more challenging. At times the little funding and government leadership available has been unstable, and we’ve seen years of work collapse. But, most things worth doing are not easy.

After grit, I’d say networking skills, speaking and writing, and a human centered design approach to product development.

What advice would you give to others who are looking to work in social impact careers? Should they go to graduate school to make the transition?

No. Please don’t. If you do, go somewhere cheap. Seriously.

Whoever it is that you want to help, my advice is, go over there, move in, and listen. You can get reading lists from wherever, buy the texts for $5 each on hpb.com, and start a book club. Also, follow the real trend. In economies that are really growing, people learn things on Youtube as much as universities. Get a volunteer job at a company that seems to be making a difference, and eventually, if you’re any good, they’ll hire you. If you are no good, then do something different. You’ll be good at something. The great news is you can switch because your diploma isn’t anchoring you to a soul killing job that is necessary for loan payments.

I’d like to see a study that surveys 5,000 Public Administration and International Development grad school candidates 10 years after graduation. I’ll bet 90% would not be in those fields and the reasons would be: #1 pay was too low or unstable (especially when covering a student loan), #2 the office culture was toxic and off mission, and #3 the work was too demanding.

If you don’t have loans then #1 is less of a problem and you can be the firebrand driving hard at #2, with less fear of getting fired. Re: #3, see below.

How do you balance your work/life?

Work-life balance helps is great for selling books and this-season’s-version of Kick Boxing classes. It is a myth and often impractical.

If you want to accomplish a lot, you’ll need to work a lot. And, if there are less resources available – the culture offers less money for progress on that problem – then to make progress, you’ll probably need to work even more. Oh, and you’re doing something hard – not selling a new flavor of booze, a fresh caffeine delivery mechanism, or a sneakier way to monetize privacy.

Good news, you will feel better about the dent in the world that you are making. Meaning is more indicative of happiness than leisure time.

If you’re reading this, then it is likely that your privilege allows you to decide what to spend your life accomplishing. This is one of the most precious choices.

Life lessons learned: Any other general advice you’d like to share about careers?

If you can’t switch, you are not free. So, become awesome at something marketable.

Be loyal if you find a mission and a solution that has real potential.

Don’t be afraid to call foul on toxic, abusive, egoist, or wasteful team situations. The people you are trying to serve deserve the team’s best efforts and you can help move towards that.

Knowing that you don’t understand is the beginning of understanding.

Get up early.

Laugh more.

Featured Yoda#2: Economic Growth Director for International NGO

Our next featured Q&A is with Karla Yoder, Technical Director of Economic Growth for Global Communities, an international development organization. She shares about her journey to working in international development, as well as advice she has gleaned along the way.

Q: Karla, please share about your current role working in social impact and your organization.

A. I work in international economic development for Global Communities, a non-profit or non-governmental organization (NGO). As a technical adviser, I support programs in youth employment, livelihoods, enterprise development, access to finance and inclusive markets in developing countries to apply best practices from these fields as well as documenting and disseminating lessons they are learning.  This means developing internal tools such as implementation standards, program models and guidelines, and contributing to the broader knowledge base of the field through writing briefs and articles and presenting at conferences.  I also do a lot of new business development work which includes leading the technical design for funding proposals and building relationships with funders and partners.

Q: Please share a little bit about your career path prior to joining Global Communities.

A: I spent my senior year of college interning for international development organizations, since I grew up in Southern Africa and knew that that was the field I wanted to work in. I took a few early detours, such as becoming a community organizer in Washington, DC (also based on my concern about equality for low-income people), and then started at the bottom as a program associate for an international development project.  Along my career path, I managed publications, and then switched to U.S.-based workforce development issues given the opportunities to do more research, writing, and technical advising.

When I wanted more on-the-ground experience in Africa, I took a fellowship for which I needed to raise my own funding, and that gave me the opportunity to design and manage an economic empowerment program. Upon my return to the U.S., I wanted more program design work and took a business development role in an international development NGO that would allow me conduct field assessment trips and lead program design efforts for USAID and foundation proposals.

Q: What do you find fulfilling about your work? Why did you join Global Communities?

A: I’m passionate about addressing inequality and poverty globally, and wanted to join a mission-driven organization that allowed me to support this work. I love knowing that the things I do, even if not directly part of a field program, are contributing to that.

Q: What are the most important skills to succeed in your job? And in your career in general?

A: Being a fast learner, having an analytical mindset, strong writing and facilitation skills, and an ability to be effective in cross-cultural situations.  Strong organizational skills have also been important.

Q: How did you end up working for Global Communities?

A: I’m in my fourth role at Global Communities.  I started ten years ago as a business development officer, and eventually transferred into a technical role. When I joined Global Communities, I had already developed some subject matter knowledge in youth employment through 5 years of work in that field, and had returned to the U.S. from a one-year fellowship in Zambia, where I designed and established an economic empowerment program for a human rights organization. I took a fairly junior position at Global Communities because I wanted to gain skills in federal proposal development, and I believed that program development for proposals was the Washington-based job closest to the on-the-ground design work I had been doing and loved. 

I found the job “cold” (not via personal referral): I had previously applied for another position there, and so I was in their HR system (but I hadn’t heard back from them at the time of application).  They later contacted me about the position I was hired for. 

Q: What advice would you give to others who are looking to work in social impact careers, especially in terms of international development? Should they go to graduate school to make the transition?

A: Choose the types of organizations that you are interested in working for and then pursue jobs there, even if not your ideal. Jobs in these fields are limited and in high demand and getting inside an organization is often the biggest hurdle. I have navigated completely different roles than where I originally started, in two different organizations.

Once you are inside, be curious, make your interests known, and volunteer for things. Be prepared to prove yourself.  My first role after grad school at one international development organization was managing the publishing for a project that supported research on health and basic education in Africa, which was admittedly not the most exciting role.  I got to know the basic education specialist on the project and talked about my past experience in that field and mentioned my interest in doing more. When she wanted assistance in doing a literature review of community schools in Africa, I volunteered and spent a few weeks of evenings and weekends working on it, since it wasn’t part of my required responsibilities. Moving internally to a role that you really want is easier once you are known and have proven your value.

I do think that graduate school is important for the more interesting and technical roles in the international development field.  There are a number of degrees in international development which are more generalist and also options that have a subject matter focus–public health, public policy, business and trade.  An MBA is also useful for working in economic development specifically.

Q: How do you balance your work/life?

A: Prioritizing exercise is key for mental health and energy– years ago I switched to getting up at 5:30 am during the week to exercise, to ensure that it didn’t get left out due to evening distractions. I run outside year round, and walk for part of my commute to ensure outdoor time during the work week. My commute is on a quieter section of the subway line where I always get a seat; I don’t read work emails and instead try to meditate.  I resist pressure to work late or on weekends if not absolutely necessary. I work additional hours when needed and try to hold myself to leaving at 5:30 pm every other day. You need to accept that you will never feel caught up or as though you’ve done enough. I also take long vacations–2 weeks at a time when I can, going to interesting places and switching off from work completely.

Q: Life lessons learned: Any other general advice you’d like to share about careers?

A: I have found that the people whom you work with and the opportunity to learn new things regularly are what make a job satisfying. Don’t focus too narrowly on a particular position. Secondly, your network is your biggest source of career advancement so use any opportunity to build it. Be curious about and interested in those you meet as authentic relationships are a true asset.  You want people in your corner who will cheer you on!

Thanks for sharing about your journey with us, Karla!