The school, named M’mbula, built classrooms in 2019 and 2021 to serve the first, second, third and fourth graders. To date, the remaining students – those in fifth and sixth grade – still use a classroom built from grass.
In this final post about my Team Dayā experience I’d like to touch on the most lasting and impactful learning from my trip: at home or abroad, developing a vision about the future is foundational to achieving that future.
One of the Team Dayā pillars is the idea of raising expectations within a developing country. Part of the difficulty helping a community raise their expectations for the future is that they often simply “don’t know what they don’t know” – developing a vision for the future outside of day-to-day experience is very difficult.
(PHOTO: Team Dayā member Chevan Nanayakkara mixing the concrete being used in the foundation of the new school.)
I had an opportunity to speak with the Malawi country director for buildOn about why sustainable development has a better chance of succeeding now vs. in the past. He remarked that the direct cultural exchange is an invaluable component of empowering the local village. It’s an opportunity for them to see that at a basic level their hopes and dreams are the same as people from another country: quality housing, opportunity, freedom, safety/security, a better future for children, etc.- direct contact and conversations allows them to experience that we’re all just people separated by geography and time (living lives in countries at different stages of development). Being able to see other cultures and other ways of living has made the world of possibilities much bigger and given them a “target to shoot for” in their own development.
The country director continued, saying that for a developing country like Malawi, besides the direct cultural exchange, the biggest accelerator to raising expectations and developing positive community visions was the availability of the Internet. This really surprised me, since I’ve always viewed the Internet through American eyes where it was an add-on technology to our modern lifestyle. For Malawians, being able to see and hear about what other countries and cultures are doing has made the world of possibilities much bigger. Even if people in the villages don’t have direct access to the Internet, somewhere along the way they have contact with people in small towns and cities who do. The people I spoke with were very hopeful for the future and feel like they are seeing and experiencing change and improvement in the country very quickly. Whether it’s a project like a new school for their village, that the government is improving roads and highways or that new jobs and lifestyles are available in city-centers, Malawians believe that the country is advancing and developing.
(PHOTO: Team Dayā members with some of the students in Nchetana, Malawi.)
As I mentioned, Team Dayā is committed to the principle of taking on projects that support sustainable community development. If you have an opportunity to be part of a school-building project, your participation will go far beyond being part of a work detail. You’ll have a rewarding experience that will shape you across many dimensions but, more importantly, your presence and point-of-view will inspire people to help themselves while influencing and shaping their outlook about what is possible for them to achieve for their future and to improve their life.
(VIDEO: Team Dayā 2023 Malawi: At the morning circle in Nchetana, Malawi, everyone comes together in partnership to start the day.)
I was blessed to participate in this Team Dayā activity with the following people, who provided me with an unforgettable experience and were also sources of unending inspiration, support and joy. Please reach out to any one of them to hear more about Building Change: Davina Kent, Riley Jacobson, Kerri Olson, Nicolle Pangis, Vib Prasad, Lauren Rosen and Jay Sears.
Start-ups – little companies with a big potential growth trajectories – are really, really hard to work in but can also be really, really fun. There’s a sense of purpose within the team, an orientation towards action and a feedback loop from seeing change that is unusual to experience in a bigger company or corporation. The day-to-day can be really meaningful, even if the strategic goals are aspirational and/or far-away. This can be the same with being involved in community service or human development, even on a single-project basis. In my last post I talked about the importance of choosing projects that are sustainable but in this post I want to talk about how my Team Dayā experience generated the same kind of actionable feedback loop that makes working in start-ups so exciting and meaningful.
(PHOTO: Team Dayā prepares members for fundraising and for the travel to the school ground breaking. The entire experience is very immersive.)
Our day-to-day life is full. Setting aside time for service in your local community is hard enough, let alone trying to plan to be a part of an international service project. Operationally, the aspect of my Team Dayā experience that impressed me the most was how well planned and organized the experience was. There was a lot of support and coaching to help with fundraising, planning and coordination calls to get us ready to be in-country and a well structured agenda to follow once on-the-ground. Participating in a service activity in a far-way, developing country sounds disorienting and challenging but Team Dayā goes to great lengths to help participants be prepared for the experience, transition into the project and stay focused on the experience while in the community.
Bringing people from different cultures, economic systems and traditions together for a joint-activity is no easy task. The preparation and planning doesn’t just happen with project participants. On the community side, conversations probe into whether there is a need for a school, if the community will be active in the build and if they will ensure use of the school and attendance by their children post-build. These conversations and this prep-work happen for months before volunteers arrive in-country. All of this pre-game is done to ensure that there is a well-defined day-to-day structure and plan for everyone involved.
(PHOTO: Team Dayā member Nicolle Pangis builds the foundation of the new school building that will house 100 5th and 6th graders.)
Of all my volunteering efforts, I’d never been immersed in a foreign culture so quickly and simultaneously felt so comfortable. As they say, the devil’s in the details, and I can definitely say that Team Dayā is on top of all of them. Once our time in the field is completed and after we head home, there is follow-up and communication to ensure we are updated about the work by the community all the way to completion of the school. Malawi marks the 4th Team Dayā school and at this point there is an engagement model and operation that “just works”. If you’re considering being a part of Team Daya, I can tell you from personal experience, that you’ll be getting involved with an organization that is effective in its mission and delivers a meaningful experience you’ll remember for a long time.
I was blessed to participate in this Team Dayā activity with the following people, who provided me with an unforgettable experience and were also sources of unending inspiration, support and joy. Please reach out to any one of them to hear more about Building Change: Davina Kent, Riley Jacobson, Kerri Olson, Nicolle Pangis, Vib Prasad, Lauren Rosen and Jay Sears.
