Training up local Zambians

Helping to shape the Driven Ministries vision for 2020

After taking the short flight from Harare to Lusaka we have returned to Kabwe, a town built around a lead mine, now closed, where our friends Chris and Rebecca Viola have set up a project called Driven Ministries after a move from the USA with their four children to help disciple people, especially children, living in the large compound (think of a more spread out South African township) of Makalula.

Evening training session at Maplehurst Guesthouse

We've been in Zambia for just over three weeks now, and although this nation has its own challenges, which we will share with you later on in this post, they are nothing compared to its close neighbours Zimbabwe, where we were able to experience the daily challenges as we often had to cater for ourselves and where we were when we last posted an update.

This is our third visit to Zambia and on our two previous visits we had been hosted by the Violas in their home which sits along the Great North Road, a major transport route enabling goods to travel to and from the port of Dar el Salaam in Tanzania right through Zambia, Zimbabwe and on to Botswana and South Africa. This time we are staying in an old converted farmhouse that the team here have been renovating into a backpackers/conference centre with the desire for it to not only be a place where people will be trained in the basics of the hospitality industry but to be a means of supporting that ministry via the profit that it makes.

Training of Practitioners 

Our first week enabled us to invest into the lives of the Driven Ministries team, helping them to shape their future plans for 2020 by running through the basic principles of the Leadership for Life which look at Team and Project. It was great to help the team come up with a shared vision as well as values and behaviours for each of the different expressions of their various outreaches which include a daily sports outreach programme, similar to the one that we ran at the village of hope, a prison ministry, back to school programme and investment into local church leaders.

We deliver, they read, they deliver

Last week we ran a week long trainer of practitioners, we were joined at the conference centre by 10 people who we had already delivered the Leadership for Life programme into, either during our last visit with Driven or at the E3 Initiative conference that we ran in Pietermaritzburg in November. Each person who attended has to prove that they have applied what we shared with them into their own lives, starting a project that used the principles for the benefit of others.

One guy had started a 'gaming shop' in his local community, he started the 'business' with a TV and cellphone, he sold the cellphone and used the money to buy a Playstation and opened up his 'shop' to the young people, charging them a small fee to play games, the profits of which he used to pay the rent and electricity, as well as purchase another PlayStation. As he spent time with the young people he heard the stories of the children who were attending the 'shop' during school hours, many of them had dropped out of school so he actually paid for some of them to return to school to further their education, a leader exists for the benefit of others! 

Game Shop Owner now becomes
a practitioner to share the
programme with his community

These are the kinds of stories we are hearing from those who have attended our programmes and who have understood that they have amazing potential and by changing their thinking can start to write a different story for their own lives and the lives of those around them.

We had a great time with those who came to be trained, they stayed at the same accommodation, with the Driven team doing an amazing job as they hosted their first conference with the delegates staying over and being fed and watered. As in Zimbabwe we have experienced issues with power outages, these are scheduled which makes it easier to plan around, but which caused problems with the supply of water that comes from the borehole, that borehole needed electricity to pump up the water to the holding tank, but the team did so well working around those issues that we hardly noticed as we taught during the week.

Selfie in the community

It was great to send the 10 people out on the Friday afternoon with the knowledge and confidence that we had seen grow in them as they demonstrate that they had understood the principles that make the Leadership for Life programme so powerful, not only by them reading through their manuals but also by them delivering the programme back to us as we critiqued them in the way they put the points across via the various activities that help people to remember the key points.

Driven Superstars play out a 1-1 draw

As we intimated in the first paragraph Zambia isn't without its challenges and these could be seen as we had the chance to watch the Driven Superstars play a league game of football, held in Makalulu, where we were joined by a crowd of hundreds of people, mainly children who were showing signs of poverty that is rife in that area. The Superstars played out a tough 1-1 draw with a local team, a fair result given the condition of the pitch which was mostly made up of compacted sand and made it hard for the game to gain any actual rhythm.

Zambia is also currently going through a spate of violence where people are being gassed in their homes whilst they are sleeping, it seems to be linked to ritual killings where body parts are being used in traditional African religions but the government and police have stated that this isn't the case. However this news is being shared both by the media and also word of mouth which is causing people to live in a state of fear which is therefore having knock on effect to their mental health and well being.

Out running in the local community

Other than our busy days training we have been able to get out for long walks and runs around the local fields, which has helped to refresh us, as well as reading for extended periods of time, I have also just updated 'the books we are reading list' to the top right hand panel of this page. 

We have also enjoyed a braai with some of the Violas friends as well as taking part, and winning, a quiz night that was also held at the conference center.

This time next week we will be back in South Africa, Durban to be more specific, where we will be running another Leadership for Life programme with a good friend of ours who has invited us to invest in the local people that their church is supporting, we will update further once we are there.