By La'eeqa Martin, Stuart Morrison & Kedibone Shuping | Africa Matters Ambassadors Program Team
Africa Matters Ambassadors Program Updates
The Africa Matters Ambassadors Program (AMAP) has successfully concluded its 2022 programmatic activities. We have provided 13 participants (Ambassadors) with skills and an increased understanding of afrocentric ideologies to unlock their leadership capacity and transform their communities through community engagement projects (CEPs).
2022 AMAP Cohort
At the start of our 2022 program, 17 AMAP Ambassadors were accepted into the program. To date, four (4) Ambassadors have been dismissed or withdrawn from the program, leaving us with the remaining 13 Ambassadors from the following countries: South Africa (3), Tanzania (1), Botswana (1), Sierra Leone (2), Kenya (3), Cameroon (2) & Algeria (1).
Program Updates
Modules
All 14 modules were successfully completed with an 87.5% attendance rate throughout the program. These included 10 skills development modules covering a range of topics from Financial literacy to African feminism and Global Citizenship, as well as the 4 CEP-focused sessions dedicated to providing Ambassadors with the required support as they conceptualised and planned and implemented their CEPs.
Mentorship program
Our mentorship program has been a success, with mentors and mentees remaining committed and making good use of their arranged meeting times. Ambassadors have shared with us how their mentors have helped them to grow as young professionals and how they’ve often served as soundboards to struggles that they’ve faced personally or professionally. Some mentors have gone the extra mile to directly assist Ambassadors with their CEPs, truly investing in their mentorship relationship and offering a safe space for our Ambassadors to thrive and grow.
Community Engagement Projects (CEP)
Between August and November, Ambassadors were tasked with implementing their community engagement projects. Projects ranged across many themes, from hosting workshops to reduce stigma and raise awareness about Obstetric Fistula, a medical condition affecting women when they give birth, to conducting a livelihood training program in weaving and gara (cloth/material) tie-dying to produce clothing products to sell at community markets. Our Ambassadors targeted Gender-Based Violence survivors, unemployed youth, women and girls seeking empowerment and leadership opportunities and school children wanting to gain financial literacy training and managed to roughly impact more than 250 members of their communities through their projects.
We provided all Ambassadors with seed funding of up to $250 USD to assist with covering the costs of project implementation.
As representatives of the program, it is important that the Ambassadors are able to share the brand and message of Africa Matters Initiative with all of their project beneficiaries within their communities. Many Ambassadors have received AMI-branded t-shirts for themselves and their volunteers and wore them while conducting their projects.
Residential Summit
We were unable to mobilise enough funding to host a residential summit this year, but we have high hopes of collaborating with fellow AMI flagship program, the She Is Empowered Program, to host a joint residential summit in 2023 for both our Ambassadors and the ShE Leaders. More information about this will be shared in the new year.
The Road Ahead
We recently held the Community Engagement Project presentations in which our 2022 Ambassadors shared some of their successes and challenges from the planning to implementation stages of their projects, as well as how they plan to make their projects sustainable and long-term. Out of the 13 ambassadors, we had 12 present over two sessions which took place on the 16th and 30th of November 2022, respectively. The recorded sessions will be uploaded onto the Africa Matters Initiative Youtube page in the coming weeks, so please do keep an eye out on our YouTube channel to see the work that our Ambassadors have been doing over the past several months.
The final phase of the 2022 program is the graduation ceremony (Date TBC), which will mark the conclusion of this year's program as well as induct the 2022 cohort into the AMAP Alumni network.
We opened the 2023 AMAP Application Cycle in October and closed applications on 6 November 2022. We received a whopping 2410 applications of which 350 applications were successfully accepted to be received. The review process consists of external and internal volunteers reviewing the written applications. In early December, the AMAP team will be selecting candidates for the interview stage of the application process. We look forward to conducting interviews in early January 2023 with the intention of selecting 20 exceptional applicants for the 2023 cohort. The 2023 program will officially begin in February 2023.
We recently took part in the GlobalGiving ‘Giving Tuesday’ campaign on 29 November 2022 to raise funds for our 2023 program. We are incredibly appreciative of the support we have received from the GlobalGiving community in helping to empower and upskill young African leaders and changemakers. Our fundraising effort for next year continues, so if you would like to support our work, please consider contributing towards the program by visiting our GlobalGiving page.
Conclusion
We could not do what we do without your unwavering support for our program. No words can express how grateful we are for your belief in our work, and we hope that you continue to invest and support us by sharing our work with your network and stand beside us as we aim to empower and upskill African youth to be the change they wish to see on this continent.
If you have any questions, concerns or suggestions, please feel free to contact us at amap@africamattersinitiative.com.
Wishing you a joyous holiday season and a happy new year!
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