leadership and debate club - Center for Creative Leadership

LEADERSHIP AND DEBATE CLUB
Funded by the British Embassy in Ethiopia
2013-2014
INTRODUCTION
In October 2013, CCL, with the support of British Embassy, launched six all female Leadership and Debate Clubs to universities in Addis
Ababa, Ethiopia. The purpose of these Leadership and Debate Clubs was to create a safe,
nurturing, dynamic and self-sustaining space in
which young women could develop confidence
in themselves as individuals and active members of society. With time and further development, these clubs can ultimately create a
culture of leadership and debate among young
university women, strengthening the voice and
democratic values of an important and yet often
overlooked demographic of society.
The report comes follwoing the completion of
the first year of the Leadership and Debate
Clubs and aims to highlight the impacts of the
program as well as lesssons learned and concluding recommendations for future programs
such as this one.
Findings Summary
Thus far the Leadership and Debate Clubs
have been met with success. While developing
a widespead culture of leadership and debate
within participating universities will take time,
all the club’s specific program goals were met
within the first year.
The young women
participants demonstrated increased
self-awareness,
self-esteem, confidence, willingness to
share ideas, and comfort speaking in public
and asking questions.
The clubs hosted a total of 12 debates over
a 6 month period and
the participants cited
the benefits of having
a broader professional network, stron-
ger support system in school and increased
ability to think and plan ahead, specifically in
regards to time management. Perhaps, most
importantly, the clubs show promise for future
sustainability; when interviewed, nearly all the
girls expressed a strong interest in continuing to
participant and run the club during the following
school year.
The challenges encountered throughout the
clubs this year were relatively minor and easy
to deal with. Participants and mentees alike
struggled with time management, scheduling,
delayed start dates, dealing appropriately with
exam periods, finding consistent classroom
spaces and low energy levels during meeting
times. Many of these minor difficults however
pushed the girls to work together more closely
and establish early on new standards for how
the clubs would be run.
Looking forward, we recommend that new
iterations of this program focus on providing the
resources and skills necessary to ensure that
the participants will be capable to successfully continue running the clubs by themselves.
Additionally, more attention can be given to
anticipating scheduling conflicts, providing
more training workshops and opportunities for
the girls to bond outside the classroom, and
keeping energy levels high during lunch time
meetings.
BACKGROUND
In Ethiopia, young women from all backgrounds frequently experience challenges
that distort their self-perception and prevent them from reaching their full potential.
Whether a girl is from a rich or poor family, a
rural or an urban community, she is equally
vulnerable to isolation and the restrictive - often damaging - socio-cultural norms, practices, attitudes and beliefs about what it is to
be a girl. As in elsewhere in the world, wealth,
education and class cannot guarantee
protection against the discrimination, gender-based violence and deprivation that girls
may suffer, simply because they are girls.
One of the most effective ways to combat
these issues is to work closely with young
women to provide spaces in which they can
build networks and support systems, surround themselves by positive role models,
develop their voice and take an active role in
creating a more inclusive and equal society.
Helping girls to build confidence and change
the ways in which they think about themselves and one another allows them to question their place in society, take advantage of
the opportunities that are presented to them
and make the most of the activities in which
they are engaged.
To provide exactly this community, CCL, with
the help of the British Embassy, has worked
with eight university campuses in Addis Ababa to create six self-sustaining young women’s Leadership and Debate Clubs. Building
on its very successful 2012-2013 Social
Innovation Mentoring (SIM) pilot at the EiABC
campus in Lideta, CCL’s new program has
increased reach and offers the young women
who graduated from the SIM pilot the chance
to share what they learned with others.
CCL sees ongoing leadership development
and debate at the university level as an
opportunity to build a
community of young
women that are thought
leaders, uniquely positioned to use their
education and voice
to inspire and affect
positive change. Young
women engaged in the
Leadership and Debate
Clubs will build the confidence, self-awareness,
resilience and communication skills needed
to make the life choices
that will allow them to
become models of what it means to be a
woman in Ethiopia.
Most importantly, establishing a safe, nurturing and inspiring space that encourages
young women to think and speak freely helps
to create a culture in which they are accepted
as leaders, innovators, and socially-minded
entrepreneurs. These spaces can offer young
women, ready and able to initiate meaningful
dialog among their peers, the opportunity to
strengthen the democratic values in an often
overlooked demographic.
PROGRAM GOALS
Mission: To create a culture of leadership
and debate among young
university women.
Objective: To create a safe, nurturing,
dynamic and self-sustaining space in which
young university women can develop confidence in themselves as individuals and active
members of society.
Specific Program Goals:
• Improved self-awareness, self-esteem
and perceptions of individuality in order
to improve participants’ well-being and
leadership status
• Increased self-confidence and willingness
to share ideas
• Improved understanding of how to articulate an argument or debate
• Access and inspiration from NGO’s, entrepreneurs, innovators, an creative personalities
• Improved verbal and non-verbal communication skills for leadership
• Ongoing forums that facilitate ideation and
debate among young women in university
• Increased networking and support for
young women vulnerable to dropping out
of university
• Help participants create a vision for the
future by building solidarity and enhancing
young womens’ sense of self-worth
• Increased ability to think and plan ahead
WHO, WHAT, WHEN
When: Leadership and Debate
Clubs began to meet in mid/late October and ran until the end of March.
Although the clubs were originally
intended to begin in September, the
program start date was significantly
delayed because the universities’
official start dates for the 2013-2014
school year were pushed back by
nearly 2 months.
Who: Clubs were made up of 20-25
1st, 2nd and 3rd year female university students. Participants were drawn
from 8 universities, 5 of which were
public and 3 of which were private,
and were selected for their demonstrated interest and enthusiasm to
participant in the program. Clubs
were formed mostly within single
universities however, Arat Kilo and
Amist Kilo University shared one club
between the two schools as did Sidist
Kilo and Faculty of Business and
Economics (FBE) University. In total,
this made for 6 clubs with over 120
participants.
The list of participating universities
includes:
• Arat Kilo
• Amist Kilo
• Sidist Kilo
• Faculty of Business and Economics (FBE)
• Ethiopian Institute of Architecture
Building Construction (EiABC)
• Hope University College
• Admas University College
• Unity University
What: Each Leadership and Debate
Club was run by 3-4 young women
who had previously graduated from
CCL’s successful 2012-2013 Social
Innovation Mentoring (SIM) pilot program at the EiABC campus in Lideta.
The clubs met once a week during a
time chosen by group consensus and
participated in a number of different
activities throughout the programs’
duration. The Master Mentors also
met before the start of the school
year to prepare for the prorgram and
once a month while the clubs were in
session to discuss and find solutions
to the common challenges.
PROGRAM ACTIVITIES
Weekly Lunch and Learns:
Every week each Leadership and
Debate Club hosted one or more guest
speaker to share their experiences with
the group of young women. The guest
speakers came from all walks of life,
but whether they were entrepreneurs,
volunteers, professors, or artists, they
always provided the group with a positive and new reflection of what successful women can and do look like.
Monthly Debates:
On the last Saturday of every month,
each Leadership and Debate Club had
the opportunity to debate a club from
a different university. Through these
small events, the girls were able to
practice formulating and communicating an argument and speaking in front
of others in a safe and comfortable
environment. The Master Mentors were
also able to provide valuable support
and feedback to the girls on how to
improve their presentation, delivery and
argument.
Leadership Training:
The Master Mentors led their Leadership and Debate Clubs through CCL’s
highly effective and culturally tailored
2-day Leadership Essentials Training
workshop. During the workshop, the
girls discussed communication, trust,
leadership, time management and
bonded in a ways that wouldn’t be
possible in a normal social setting.
The trainings also provided the Master
Mentors with the opportunity to improve
their own facilitation and mentoring
skills.
Volunteering:
Girls from the
Leadership and
Debate Clubs volunteered with Elilta,
an NGO located in
Addis Ababa that
provides training
and rehabilitation
for former female
prostitutes. The
girls worked mostly
tutoring and mentoring the young children of the women undergoing training
with Elilta’s rehabilitiation program.
Public Debates in Hawassa and at National
Theater:
Representatives from the six Leadership and Debate Clubs participated
in three large public debates: the first
at Unity University in Addis Ababa,
the second at Hawassa University in
the Southern Nations Nationalities and
People region, and the third at Ethiopia’s National Theater in Addis Ababa.
These larger debates gave the girls the
opportunity to put what they’d learned
to the test and defend an argument in
ASSESSMENT
One of CCL’s top priorities is to ensure that
the work and projects we support have positive, sustainable and the intended impacts
for all of our beneficiaries. We use creative
and innovative assessment tools to evaluate
the impacts of our programs and gather a
clear understanding of the ways in which we
can improve ourselves as a consultancy.
For the Leadership and Debate Clubs we
used a mix of qualitative and semi-qualitative methods to evaluate how well we fulfilled the program’s initial objectives and to
better understand the specific impact these
clubs had on the lives of the young women
we worked with.
Post Program Paper Evaluation:
CCL used a post-program paper reflection
form to capture an understanding of participant’s self-perceptions as well as assess
their perceived degree of change in 6 focal
areas. The reflection forms were distributed by an external evaluator and filled out
anonymously by a random selection of 49
participants from 3 different universities.
The paper evaluations took approximately
15-25 minutes to complete and included
3 free response questions and 6 areas
in which participants were able to rank
themselves 1-10 according to how they
perceived themselves before and after the
program.
The free response questions:
1. How would you describe yourself to
your best friend?
2. What makes a good leader? Do you
see yourself as a leader? Why or why
not?
3. How do you think this program has affected your life and your idea of who you
are and what can you do?
Self-Ranking:
Please rank yourself in the following areas
according to how you felt before you began
the program and after:
• Self-esteem
• Comfort asking a professional a question
• Comfort speaking in front of others
• Ability to form an argument
• Support you feel in your university
• Control you feel you have over your life
Head/Heart/Feet/Trash:
After completing the paper reflection forms,
the girls were broken up into two or three
groups and, sticking post-it notes on large
poster paper, answered four general questions:
Head: What have I learned from my time
in this program?
Heart: How have I felt throughout the
program?
Feet: What will I walk away with or feel
inspired to go do now?
Trash: What part of the program would I
throw away or change?
Focus Group Interviews:
Small focus group interviews were conducted with small, randomly selected groups of
4-6 mentees and Master Mentors. These
discussions gave participants a chance to
speak freely and openly about specific program details that could not be addressed
through the other evaluation tools. The
focus group discussions were led a female
external evaluator and conducted at CCL
during times that were chosen by the participants.
IMPACTS AND FINDINGS
Participants saw a 60% increase in perceived change of self.
The way in which we perceive ourselves
directly impacts our behaviors and the
ways in which we interact with our surroundings. There is no easy or unbiased
way to measure things such as confidence,
self-esteem, comfort levels, and sense of
agency. However, if we believe that we are
more confident - then we usually are. And
we if we feel more comfortable speaking in
public - then it is most likely true.
Understanding this, we asked the girls to
evaluate the change they saw in themselves in six focal areas of the program:
Self-Esteem, Comfort Asking Questions,
Comfort Speaking in Public, Ability to Form
an Argument, Sense of Community Support,
and Sense of Agency.
Participant Perceived Change in Self!
8.2!
5!
8.2!
7.8!
4.8!
5!
Self Esteem! Comfort Asking
Comfort
a Question!
Speaking in
Public!
5.1!
Ability to Form
an Argument!
8.3!
8.1!
7.9!
5.2!
Sense of
Community
Support!
5.7!
Sense of
Agency!
IMPACTS AND FINDINGS
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IMPACTS AND FINDINGS
Speaking with the Master Mentors provided an
excellent opportunity to learn from a different
perspective what were the strengths of the
program and what areas could be improved.
The SIM girls’ feedback on the program and
their experiences as Master Mentors was
largely very positive. One girl exclaimed
during a focus group interview,
“I felt inspired
from the first
moment that I saw that girls until the
last time I watched them debate at
the National Theater.”
The Master Mentors stressed the way in which
their own skills and ability to lead became
strengthened through the process of managing the Leadership and Debate Clubs. Many
of the mentors explained that managing the
program and, more specifically, the relationships between the mentees was challenging
at the beginning. The participants came from
a number of different studies, had conflicting schedules and were varying in age and
university level. It was not easy to bring the
girls together and create the type of camaraderie that had come more naturally in the pilot
SIM program. Nevertheless, each and every
Master Mentor that we interviewed referenced
the amazing bond they witnessed between the
girls at the end of the program.
Seeing this happen was in large part the result
of Master Mentors consistently working beyond the scope of their assigned responsibilities to help the girls work through their differences to find points of connections and take
extra time when necessary to meet outside the
clubs. As one mentor explained, “Some girls
had more burdens than others, what with outside jobs or difficulties with transport. But in
the end we had to work it out. Everyone had
strengths to bring to the table and it was just
about finding what those were.”
Challenges:
• Time Management:
Both Master
Mentors and participants were forced
improve their time management skills in
order to effectively juggle their responsibilities with the Leadership and Debate Club
and their studies.
• Energy Levels: Participants often felt
tired or sluggish during meetings held at
lunch time or early before school.
• Late start date: Universities began
nearly 2 months later than originally expected, thus shortening the length of the
Leadership and Debate Clubs and causing confusion at the start of the program.
• Finding a Space: Many clubs did not
have a classroom or designated space
that they were able to use consistently for
their weekly meetings.
• Exam Periods: Clubs always took
breaks during university exam periods to
give the students time to focus on their
studies. These breaks however, made it
difficult to maintain consistent energy levels throughout the school year.
• Scheduling: Given the different univer-
sity levels and schedules of the participants, it was often difficult to find a time in
which all participatnts from the clubs could
meet
IMPACTS AND FINDINGS
the people
139 who who
had never
Of theOf139
said they had
discussed the topic before...!
never discussed the topic before...
On March 8th, CCL organized a final debate with representatives from all 8 universities to discuss:
19% Sexual harassment: Is it about Sex or Power?
81% The debate was held at the National Theater and brought nearly 1000 audience members to the venue.
The event gave the young women an opportunity to test their skills and demonstrate their awareness in
a challenging environment.
Most importantly the event enabled us to engage in conversation with a larger audience and watch
how one discussion can raise awareness, introduce new ideas and pose new concerns. We were surprised to see not only how new the topic was new to most audience members but also how engaged
they became as the debate progressed, asking questions, giving feedback and challenging the ideas
presented.
This event allowed CCL to see how small events can stimulate larger effects within communities and
pose new ideas and concerns.
Using Debate to Raise Awareness
and Begin Discussions:!
61% of respondents said
they had never
discussed the
root causes for
sexual harassment before
Only 39% of
respondents
said they had
discussed the
topic before
81% said new ideas were
raised for them.
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people
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discussed the topic before...!
discussed the topic before...
24% 76% 78% still said that the debate
raised new ideas for them.
Using Debate to Ask New
Questions and Pose New Ideas
and Concerns!
Just 48 people
or the 21% of
the respondents
said that the
debate did not
raise any new
questions, ideas
and/or concerns
79% of the 227
respondents
said that the
debate raised
for them new
questions, ideas
and/or concerns
CONCLUDING RECOMMENDATIONS
• More focus should given to sustainability:
Having gone through the intensive SIM pilot
program the year prior, the Master Mentors
were exemplary at providing the necessary
structure and guidance to the mentees.
However, the participants of the Leadership
and Debate Clubs were relatively dependent
on the leadership of the Master Mentors and
there were few opportunities for them to practice organizing their own events or employing
their leadership skills within the clubs. Future programs could introduce a transitional
period in which the participants begin to
coordinate their own guest speaks, volunteer
opportunities and debates. This will give
the participants an opportunity to practice
what they’ve learned as well as increase
participant accountability and ensure future
club sustainability. Guidelines could also be
developed to help other universities that express interest develop their own Leadership
and Debate Club.
• Anticipate scheduling conflicts:
A common frustration articulated by the
Master Mentors and club participants was
that scheduling remained a conflict through-
out the entire program. Many of the clubs
struggled to find a suitable classroom that
was available every single week and it was
common for the clubs to meet in a different
space every meeting. In future programs
more needs to be done to work with administration or professors to find a classroom or
space that will work consistently for the entire
program duration.
• Bring or provide snacks:
Weekly club meetings were usually held at
lunch time, making it hard for the girls to
concentrate. A simple but easy solution for
future programs is to organize the provision
of small snacks to help keep the girls alert.
• More training workshops:
There was only one 2-day leadership training workshop conducted for each club but
many girls cited it as an highlight of their
experience and an important learning moment for them. Similarly, the Master Mentors
expressed a strong interest in facilitating
more training workshops so that the girls
would have more time to cover topics outside
of basic leadership skills. Future programs
could consider introducing more training (or
training of trainer) workshops into the clubs
that would help the girls prepare to run the
groups themselves and practice their own
management and communication skills.
• Include more outside bonding
opportunities:
Much of the bonding that occurred between
the young women in the clubs happened
outside of the Lunch and Learn meetings
and during training workshops, trips and
volunteer opportunities. The friendships and
bonds formed between the girls played an
important part in increasing their confidence,
self-esteem and sense of a support system
within their university. Future programs can
create more opportunities for the girls to
become closer and learn from each one another in settings outside of their universities.
Specifically, volunteer outings may provide
the ideal space for this happen. Many of the
participants expressed in an interest in doing
more volunteer work and doing so is an
effective and meaningful way to share positive reflections of women in non-academic
spaces.
ABOUT US
The British Embassy, Addis Ababa
The Center for Creative Leadership Ethiopia
We represent British interests in Ethiopia, Djibouti, Somaliland and the
African Union. We help boost political, cultural, economic and social
relations between them and the UK by offering a wide range of services and funding of various projects. We encourage, support and
develop strong partnerships between Britain and Ethiopia, Djibouti and
Somaliland, particularly those which contribute to positive change, stability, conflict prevention and reducing poverty. In particular, we seek
to bolster pluralism, accountability and rights.
Based in Addis, Ababa, Ethiopia, we are the social innovation hub for
the Center for Creative Leadership. Driven by our mission to advance
the understanding, practice and development of leadership for the
benefit for society worldwide, we work to develop innovative, culturally appropriate tools, deliver high-quality programs at low cost in an
emerging market context, and democratize leadership at scale. We
have been experts and leaders in our field for the last 44 years and
draw success from our unique research-based, design thinking approach to developing creative and highly contexualized solutions to
challenges of all scales.