Babson-Rwanda Entrepreneurship Center
Today concluded my second official week working with BREC this summer. I will divide this blog into two for reading purposes. This blog will discuss a few tasks I had to complete for BREC before my official internship start date. The next post will discuss what I have been doing for the past two weeks.
Although many of my assignments did not come in until June 1st, I began preparation work for the Entrepreneurial Leadership Development Academies, (ELDA), with two other Babson interns, Madeline Pickering and Jacob Brady, during the last week of May. The ELDA will take place in Ghana and Rwanda this summer. Hooray!!
For the summer academies, we began preparing lesson plans, equipped with ice-breakers, instructions for facilitators, and activities for the students. My task was to create a lesson plan/workshop around the following concept: Model the Way. This theme will be the first workshop the students engaged in the ELDA, and is formed around how important it is for entrepreneurs, (and essentially all leaders), to define their values, and then communicate these values in an authentic, self-expressive manner that demonstrates leadership through action.
I enjoyed creating this workshop very much because I think that self-expression and understanding one’s values, then going beyond personal values into creating team values, is an important foundation that entrepreneurs, and people in general seem to forget. This is one of the most fundamental Organizational Behavior principles! You must first be self aware before you can be socially aware. I think the importance of this idea is heightened as an entrepreneur, where it is typically important to create expectations for the business on a personal and professional (organizational) level.
It took me a little while to figure out what activities might be able to succinctly portray the significance of “modeling the way” in for young entrepreneurs, but I ended up centering the workshop on activities that helped students to define their personal and team values. This included activities such as fill-in-the-blank, Power Position, and creating a Life Map. Fill-in-the-blank questions are intended to help students define their values individually, then split up into groups where they will define team values, keeping in mind their personal values. Power Position is intended to make students aware of their preconceptions about which people naturally hold power based on their location in a room related to other individuals, then helping them to understand that anyone can be powerful, depending on the situation and the perspective. The creation of a life map is intended to make students aware of what things they really value in life, in order to structure their potential entrepreneurial endeavors, approaches, skills, and identify what they are willing to sacrifice and hope to achieve in life.
Besides creating the “Model the Way” workshop, I also created an outline for the Rocket Pitch activity the students in the ELDAs will participate in this summer. As of now, I am working domestically. I will be in Rwanda in July and cannot wait for the experiences that await me there.
Peace, love, and prosperity is yours,
Renee