Leadership in Action - Year 10

As part of the Leadership Programme, the Year 10 students participated in this year’s very successful Zawadi Bazaar by running 8 socially responsible business stalls. The student-run stalls provided a diversity of products and services, from selling foods and drinks to running a curio shop and branding water bottles. The main focus was not in making a profit alone, but in ensuring that the businesses were environmentally friendly and beneficial to the community at large.

As part of the Entrepreneurship Unit of the Leadership Programme, students in each mentor group had to conceptualise and implement a socially responsible business venture.  This involved several weeks of preparation including brainstorming, writing a business proposal and planning the budget.

Experiences such as these are designed to give students concrete opportunities to experiment with and develop their social entrepreneurship skills. The young entrepreneurs were highly effective in involving the local community in their projects with most products sold being sourced locally. The students also sought to get Mombasa businesses and organisations directly involved in their projects. 

For example, one group created “The Water Bottle Project”, a business initiative designed to promote recycling, and worked closely with Wildliving Resources, a local organization which promotes sustainability. Another mentor group teamed up with Springbreak, an NGO promoting social entrepreneurial skills, and used more than half of the profits generated by their business to buy and donate 10 solar lights to families in the town of Mavueni who had no access to electricity.   

Year 10 student, Rabia Dhanani, sums up the experience in her end of unit reflection: “[The] Leadership Programme this semester was very informative and a fun filled learning experience as well. I enjoyed the unit of social entrepreneurship mostly because it was more practical. I learnt a lot during Zawadi Bazaar because it was the time when I had to use everything I had learnt, which was awesome, and it also taught me how to diplomatically deal with customers.”