This letter from Patrick Achola perhaps best illustrates what Edtaf is all about.....
31st October 2011
Giving a hungry person fish often seem much easier than teaching him how to fish. This is because even though teaching someone how to fish is more effective and has a life time impact the truth is that it takes far much resources and patience. The reality is that there are very few people in the world today with lots of time and money to committee to one course for a long time.
I am lucky to have been found by an enabler (Education Towards a Future- EDTAF) which has countinously committed its time and resources to put me through university hence teaching me how to fish for myself. I have always known that I am a leader and can be instrumental in developing home grown solutions for Africa’s problems, However it is until EDTAF started to sponsor me to University that I started seeing exactly how it is possible for me to be transformational here in Africa.
I recently founded a charity (Spur Afrika) that aims to: providing education for the urban poor in slums, teaching life skills to youths and young adults, and assisting school going children with health care. So far Spur Afrika charity has helped 10 children attend school without problems, helped restore eye sights for 12 children and save a 12 year old girl’s life by starting her on heart disease treatment at a good local hospital. All these have happened in a span of one year since Spur Afrika was established in May 2010.
My concentration at Uni is in Leadership and Management; this course has be vital in pointing out to me African problems’ roots and offer suggestion on how the problems can be fixed locally, it was due to this that I took the step of starting a local charity to start on that journey. This semester I have had very interesting classes such as Organization Leadership and Management, Entrepreneurship, Politics and Governance, Organizational Communication, but I have also had very challenging classes that include; Statistics, and Quantitative Techniques. The two classes are both mathematical and off the records on a light note “math has never been my business partner”. However, the good news is that I feel that all these classes are helping me reach my goals
I have a vision of becoming a leader that can influence both the government and the business world to do things right and also take up the responsibility of fixing the local problems through relevant ways. I aim to transform everywhere I work so that it serves as an example to others that that it is possible to be effective and transformational without being corrupt. And also to see that Spur Afrika becomes a local charity that supplements the humanitarian work done by International Organizations in Kenya.
Patrick.
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Newsletter December 2011