From an active participant to a globally recognized leader By Ruvimbo Chivere (Zimbabwe)
Introduction
Ruvimbo Chivere is my name and I work with Sprout Women Empowerment Trust, a women’s empowerment organization that provides for engagement platforms for women to learn life skills, share experiences and dialogue on issues that affect them. I also work with the Zimbabwe Coalition on Debt and Development, an organization that champions socio-economic justice for people-centered development. I am the current Vice Chairperson for Women’s Coalition of Zimbabwe Harare Chapter and an Inaugural Fellow of the Community Engagement Exchange Program, a professional development program of the United States Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. Under this Program, I am working with a U.S based women’s organization called National Organization of Sisters of Color Ending Sexual Assault. I am an alumnus of the Training for Transformation Youth Introductory Course of 2021/2022.
The Way to Resilience
In my leadership and work experience in women and gender issues, I have faced several drawbacks including resistance due to the patriarchal nature of most African societies, lack of resources, and inequalities due to my age and few years of work experience. However, TFT transformed my mind to appreciate that change starts from within and that was one of the major learnings that helped me to be resilient in the women empowerment work that I do.
New Ways of Facilitating
The TFT Youth Course equipped me with essential facilitation skills that I employed in various spaces. I responded to a call for consultancy using a detailed application that outlined how I was going to engage the participants. The outline comprised of the TFT approach starting with a code and ending with an action plan. The host organisation applauded the uniqueness of my facilitation plan, and they provided me with constructive feedback to upscale my facilitation. I published this award on my social media pages and this attracted more opportunities. The experience boosted my confidence of implementing what I learned during the course and helped me address the challenge of lack of resources as I could earn some stipends. Furthermore, my new skills promoted the way I could interact with civil society communities, particularly on women, gender, and youth issues. Many have also adopted TFT methods of reflecting and creative ways of sharing ideas. With a more human-centered approach that includes centering, reflection, and self-introspection, I was able to facilitate three high-level workshops and more than 5 community dialogues between 2021 and 2022. I facilitated training with 35 Youth Civil Society Leaders on how to integrate counselling into activism and that training was a success. I also facilitated a workshop with 40 women in commemoration of the 16 Days of Activism in 2021 and participants appreciated the TFT techniques that allowed them the safety to share freely.
Future Plans
TFT has transformed the way I conduct workshops and I am now widely known as a professional facilitator. It gave me an opportunity to be widely recognized in micro and macro civil society spaces. Currently, I am employing TFT techniques and skills at a global level as I am working in the United States. I look forward to developing a handbook to share with the American community as a way of sharing best practices and promoting effective community engagement through TFT methodologies. I am also looking forward to strategic partnership building and collaborations between American Civil Society and the TFT Alumni community across the globe, particularly Africa.
