It started, I think about one year and a half ago when I started working with AMAIDI.

I was working at a consulting firm and I was looking to for volunteering projects. I wanted to do volunteering, but I did not have the skills to actually help construct a school, for example, or to go teach. So that’s why I was looking at pro bono consulting, which is consulting for NGOs and nonprofits.

In my search, I came across some ideas and AMAID immediately stood out because they are very professional in their communication. The website was great and they just responded also very, very quickly and very efficiently. So I really, really liked that.

AMAIDI helped me to match with an organization in Malawi call Youth Activities Initiative Organizationen, which is what brings me here today.

5 years ago, I started to work in management consulting and later on I moved on to strategy consulting. I’ve done a number of projects at large corporations, mainly in financial services sectors, so banking and insurance, but also in the energy sector. But the projects were always focused on strategy.

Means implementing a cost reduction program, for example, a growth program for an organization, a big change management, and big transformation project for organization. This is the type of projects I’ve been working on for the past 5 years.

It’s a good question. As I said, I was working as a consultant.  While working as a consultant in big corporations you don’t always see the impact or you don’t always have a positive social impact that you can really feel, that you can really notice, that is really giving back a little bit to society.

And in order to do that, I was really looking for ways to contribute. And in that way I came across a consulting project and a strategic consulting project and fit very well with my personal profile. So that’s why I was more than happy to go.

I’m working for Youth Activists Initiative Organization, which is an organization focused on young people.

They’re doing this in a number of domains. One is education. Getting young people into school and keeping them in school. Another one is sexual reproductive health. Means making sure that we can prevent the spread of HIV, AIDS and other issues. There’s also one about career where they actually help and guide young people towards a nice career path. And finally, there’s also a part about sustainability. Means empowering young people to really contribute to sustainable development in the wider context. So that’s what the organization is about.

My project specifically is about updating the organizational policies and more specifically, the strategic plan. So we are really looking ahead for the coming 5 years, how can we make the organization grow mature and become bigger and have a bigger impact on more young people?

I’m learning a lot, really, a lot of things. As I said before, I’m learning about the different cultures, especially the Malawian culture. I’m learning about the world of NGOs. My biggest learning from the project and for me personally, it’s really that there’s more to run an NGO and an NGO well.

You need 2 different skills. They need really 2 different skill types. Skill type one is be good at your core business. Looking at YAIO which is supporting young people, setting them up for the path to success, and that’s something that they’re already very good at. That is skill, skill type one.  Skill type 2 is all about organizational development and being able to run an organization and being able to cope with all the paperwork, cope with all the administration that it’s necessary to receive funding. And those are 2 very different skill types. And we do expect NGOs to have both in order to succeed.

But the NGOs that are only doing one so are only delivering very valuable work to the community, but they’re not managing to do all the paperwork and administration and all the things that are necessary to receive the money from the big donors. They get left behind. And I think that’s a learning and an opportunity as well what I want to focus on in the future.

The biggest challenges, I would say, is it’s related to the cultural part. So I’m from Belgium and and the Belgian culture is very different than Malawian culture. So, you know, it isn’t that a number of ways, but specifically, for example, the time and time management of Belgians,, if you say come at 10:00 AM Belgians will be there at 9:55 AM. Well, in Malawi, they’ll be there maybe 10:15 or 10:20 or 10:30, so it’s very different. You have very different cultures, which is a challenge and a big learning for me.

But you also have this specific sector of NGO work and NGO fundraising, which is very different compared to all the context I was used to, before working in consulting, working in management consulting there is also a very different world that you’re working with. Okay, revenues and costs, etc. But your revenues are generated directly by your customers. So if you build a nice product, your customers will pay for it.

In the NGO world, you can build the best products for your customers, which is the for example, in this case, the young people, you can build the best product for young people. The young people are not the ones paying you, it’s the donors that are feeding you and the visibility of the quality of work that you’re delivering to your actual clients, the young people. It’s not always what you can make visible through other people to the donors that are actually paying you. So it’s a very different sector and one that I really had to get used to.

Firstly I think, of course, coming here as a volunteer all by myself in a context that I’ve never been in before, has resulted in a lot of personal growth as well. So it was very interesting for me to learn.

And to learn about the culture, to learn about the habits of people to discover and to discover the Malawian culture. So personally, I look foward to the future. I’m really hoping to remain as open as I am today and just be open minded about all the different viewpoints that people can have about certain issues and keep on learning from the different viewpoints. That’s for me personally.

Professionally, I think it’s also great.  I’m used to work in a in a group of consultants. So we usually come in for example for a cost reduction program and we come in with a number of consultants and we reduce the cost. I mean, we measured a reduction in cost, but here it’s just me by myself. So also professionally, I think it’s a big challenge to take ownership of such a project and to deliver it all by myself. So professionally, I hope this will also help me grow further in my career.

It has been great in that sense that it was not an easy time. It was during COVID. So there was a lot of uncertainty about when the project would start, when we would be able to continue with the project. So a lot of uncertainty. AMAIDI, as I already mentioned, was able to take a lot of that uncertainty away and provide some stability. Provide some guidance and some coaching and really ensured that I was confidence to be able to deliver the project and to live up to the project standards.

Next to that, AMAIDI also provides professional guidance. So whereever I got stuck with the project like I don’t know what I need to do in that workshop. Do we need to look at this topic? Do I need to talk to that person? Professionally in order to make the project succeed, Tanja has allways given me a lot of professional guidance, which I really appreciate.

And then finally, on the personal level, the AMAIDI team are also very nice people to work with. I have January here in Malawi. We have Tanja, all very nice people, very, very friendly in meetings. It’s just a nice way to be organized and to participate in projects such as this one.