International Institute For Global Leadership
Issue #135* March 2013
www.global-leadership.com
Asheville, NC. USA
Guest Editorial
Predicting the Future
Felix Iziomoh (Nigeria)
flelixi@yahoo.com
Your visions and dreams today are the prophecies of what you shall one day become and achieve. You can predict what you will have, do or be five years from now by checking the visions, dreams and goals you have today. You create your tomorrow by changing and organizing your thoughts today. Organizing your thoughts and developing a plan for your life helps you to respond to the events and circumstances of life in different ways.
Are you living your life by default or by design? Some people live their lives day to day without a clear sense of where they are going. By managing your time effectively and setting goals, you have made the decision to live your life by design, to control your own destiny. Setting goals helps you identify where you are going in life. A goal is an end toward which you direct specific effort; a person without goals is like a boat without a rudder, it has no direction. A person who has goals but has not written them down is like a boat with a rudder but the sail has not been opened out. A person with written goals is like a ship with the sails unfurled and speeding forward. Goals help us to know where we are, where we are going and what to do next; they also serve as a reminder and give us direction.
If you are unhappy about your academic result, salary level, job or whatever situation in your life, then you must have an idea of what your ideal solution should be. Therefore, all you have to do is set goals or plans and what you need to achieve them and by when. You also need to take your major goal and break it down into small steps. When would you like to achieve your goal? What date? Will you need any kind of special training, educational studies or new skills to achieve your goals? You should have a set plan of action that will lead to the achievement of your goals. What things do you need that will help you achieve your goals? These are practical issues for organizing our lives. Successful people do these every time. They do not leave their lives to chance. They understand that life left to chance is doomed to fail.
Do not plan your life based on what other people expect. Plan your life based on what you want to do with it. I heard somebody say one time; if your life has been flowering beautifully and suddenly the flowers start to die, ask yourself some questions. Have you forgotten to water the roots? Having a plan for your life helps to water it. You must always look at your life and visualize your destination.
You are given two great gifts: your mind and your time. Every hour gone is gone; even if we are given an extra 24 hours, it will still not be enough. Use your time wisely. The rungs on the ladder are not meant for relaxation. Keep moving; develop an action plan! He or she who fails to plan, plans to fail! The best way to predict the future is to consciously create it!
News
Volunteers Wanted In Nigeria
Do you want to put your talents and skills to productive use? Meet new people from a low-income community in Nigeria? Want to be part of a project that transforms Nigeria and gives new perspective to Nigerian youth? Gain new skills? If yes, then consider becoming a Springboard volunteer.
Springboard project was established to combat the increasing rate of youth unemployment and the overwhelming urban migration of rural youth which are the major causes of the high crime rate in Nigeria. Through a six (6) months training program, springboard will combine organic farming and entrepreneurship training to create a practical and integrated learning experience for unemployed youth. This will equip them with relevant skills to start their own businesses after completing the training.
With partnerships with Braille Without Borders Foundation (Switzerland), Kanthari International Institute for Social Entrepreneurs (India), Africa Unbound (USA & Africa), International Institute for Global Leadership (USA), and others, the first training with 20 participants will start in May 2013. To achieve our goals, Springboard needs highly motivated volunteers who will work with us at different capacities. Volunteering can be done in the following ways:
Join Springboard in Nigeria: You can volunteer at springboard in Nigeria and work with us on different activities such as project planning, training, fundraising, video production, print and audio newsletter and many other activities. Springboard offers food and accommodation
Volunteering from Home: You can volunteer from where you are by helping us to prepare our monthly newsletters, donor reports, proposals and grants applications, raise funds, design website, creative writing on our participants and project, attract volunteers and trainers, etc.
If you are interested in becoming a springboard volunteer, please write to Lawrence at ablawrence2002@yahoo.com or lawrence2012@iiseconnect.org. You may also check our website at www.springboardng.webs.com
What Our Students Are Saying
Davui (Togo)
I entered IIGL with a survivor consciousness. I was living very terrible, horrible, no good, very bad circumstances of my life. My lack of means stopped me from higher studies. I was at the cross of roads. Trough my daily reflection and meditation, I saw the Light. That Light brought me to discover IIGL. This was my last chance. It was my ultimate Business Plan. The principles and ideas I am learning in this program are universal. They strengthened and empowered me to be the Boss of my life. Everyday I exit from the routine, thinking that let me complain on my setbacks, hardships and other odds. I believe more and more in human potentials to overcome any challenge of my life, turn it into opportunity to soar. Throughout goal setting, I got rid of passivity to be active. I am living more purposeful than ever.
My daily living is made up of my goals, quest of true prosperity. Personally, I understand True Prosperity as an ideal, a way of living based on a better human relationship you can have during your existence on this earth; from your family to your profession.
“Money is good. But it is more than obvious that it is not the source of happiness, the true Prosperity. Personally, I continue to witness unhappy, unfortunate people who despite their healthiness are “miserable”.
When I come to IIGL, I am particularly grateful to my father because of his high integrity, leadership he taught confirmed by ideas and principles I am learning in this program. My father was absolutely illiterate. However by his gift of wisdom, he taught me how to value Human in any circumstance of life. He was a great Leader remembered twenty four years after his death. I want to be like my father, like outstanding persons with moral integrity recognized everywhere. I am on the way. Obviously I don’t yet end up with my setbacks and hardship but I am feeling great certainty. I trust the Light. It brought me to where I am now. I got rid of any doubt, any worry about my future. I am a student ready, my teachers appear everyday. Throughout my learning I gain wisdom. From effect, flunky I was yesterday, I am now the cause, the Boss of my life working everyday on my goals, projects. If I knew, I would not ask for money as help where I have done it. With these experiences I learned to be always self help and all the time trust God. He is the infallible Helper. I have to trust the spiritual being more than ever to build my life soaring on the Human being. We are spiritual being having human experience said Way Dyer.
Students In Action
Afere Alaba Lawrence
ablawrence2002@yahoo.com
I became a student of IIGL in 2005. From that year, I have had several opportunities that have helped to transform my life and career.
A recent one is the 7 months social entrepreneurship training I attended at the Kanthari International Institute for Social Entrepreneurship, India. At the Institute, I received training in the following areas: project management/project planning, innovation, social marketing, fund-raising, public speech, managing finances and problem solving.
In 2008, with lots of inspiration and guidance from my IIGL studies, I started a farm project named Youth Farm Project with the aim to engage unemployed youth in my community in meaningful work through farming. 15 of us began to cultivate farmland by planting maize and since that year we have generated some income from these activities and also expanded the farm by planting Plantain, a local banana in Nigeria.
Now that I have just graduated from my training in India, I am going back to my community in Akure, Nigeria to start an entrepreneurship training on my farm and I have named it springboard. Through a six (6) months training program, springboard will combine organic farming and entrepreneurship training to create a practical and integrated learning experience for unemployed youth. This will equip them with relevant skills to start their own businesses after completing the training. For more details on this project, please visit www.springboardng.webs.com
What Our Students Are Reading
Radical Forgiveness
Colin Tipping (384 pages) $11.33
Could there be a divine purpose behind everything that happens? If you’re willing to embrace this possibility, every aspect of your life can change. This is the theory behind Radical Forgiveness, Colin Tipping’s revolutionary method for liberating your energy for the soul’s highest expression. In Radical Forgiveness, readers join Colin for step-by-step instruction in what begins as a healing process, and culminates in a paradigm-shifting path to awakening. With this updated and revised edition, readers will discover how to transform difficult emotions like anger, fear, and resentment into unconditional love, gratitude, and peace. “Radical Forgiveness is much more than the mere letting go of the past,” writes Colin. “It is the key to creating the life that we want and the world that we want.” With Radical Forgiveness, he puts that key in our hands.
Valuable Resources for Personal & Planetary Transformation
One Earth Network
www.onearth.net
An excellent directory of transformational websites around the world. The focus here is on soul media rather than social media – moving from the outer hubub and superficial connections of the World Wide Web to those people and connections which are closest to the essence of who we are, to our soul. And in this world of interconnection we do that by reaching out from that place in ourselves to others of like mind and spirit, supporting one another in each finding our unique form of true expression. One of the most powerful tools in doing this is adding video conferencing to social media, so we see one another eye-to-eye in real-time.
Coursera
www.coursera.org
We are a social entrepreneurship company that partners with the top universities in the world to offer courses online for anyone to take, for free. We envision a future where the top universities are educating not only thousands of students, but millions. Our technology enables the best professors to teach tens or hundreds of thousands of students. Through this, we hope to give everyone access to the world-class education that has so far been available only to a select few. We want to empower people with education that will improve their lives, the lives of their families, and the communities they live in. Classes offered on Coursera are designed to help you master the material. When you take one of our classes, you will watch lectures taught by world-class professors, learn at your own pace, test your knowledge, and reinforce concepts through interactive exercises. When you join one of our classes, you’ll also join a global community of thousands of students learning alongside you. We offer a wide rage of topics spanning the Humanities, Medicine, Biology, Social Sciences, Mathematics, Business, Computer Science, and many others. Whether you’re looking to improve your resume, advance your career, or just learn more and expand your knowledge, we hope there will be multiple courses that you find interesting.
Meet Our New Students
We are please to welcome two new active students this month. They are from
Kenya & Uganda.
Ann Perez Omenye (Kenya)
Over the years I have come to learn that, “when you truly know what you want and care about yourself enough to know that you want it, only then will you be able to truly find yourself….even in the ashes of life I have always found my heartbeat.
I am a believer in miracles. I believe that if you want something bad enough you will eventually find it or get it no matter how long it takes. Quoting George Bernard Shaw, “People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don’t believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and if they can’t find them, make them.” I am who I am today because I made my circumstances.
I am a Corporate Communications professional and have been employed for the last 13 years. I have had the opportunity to work in my home country Kenya and in neighboring Uganda and Tanzania. I grew up in Mombasa but currently live in Nairobi. I have dreams, just like everyone I suppose, I have unfulfilled dreams, they are not your typical big dreams but yes, they are dreams still. What I truly want out of life I am yet to achieve. Right now I work because I have to earn a living, I enjoy my job and profession, for sure, but what I would ideally love to be is a motivational speaker, a writer, inspiring lives, listen to people talk, learn from them and bring balance where needed. I long for a time when through my work I can impact individual lives, make a difference in people’s lives as myself and not a corporate professional. I have often been criticized for being unrealistic but I believe in possibilities, anything is possible under the sun.
The hot weather in Nairobi right now (February 2013) reminds me of a desert I am yet to visit and only visualize in my dreams…a desert that though bare has the occasional pool of water, or perhaps a mirage, signifying hope, there is a promise, a future. Everything is as we see it. Either we see a desert or see the desert and the occasional piece of hope. I am passionate about giving people hope. Giving people the promise of better things to come. It is never over until we decide it’s over. I have been privileged to visit countries on the African continent and the United States and as many differences as you find so do you see similarities, more so in the people. Everybody is searching, looking for answers for one thing or the other. My goal in life is to provide information. Information that empowers in an easy to understand, creative and memorable manner or form to people who need it most. Information that they can relate to and basically information that propels change.
I am a worker and a learner, every day I continue to learn from those that I work with. I have led teams and know that it takes more than titles of “boss”, “madam” “sir” to get things done. Team work and concerted effort has propelled me to where I am today. A leader, a servant leader.
I am blessed with a wonderful family that has taught me what unconditional love and commitment means. I now know that home is not a place but rather a feeling. I love reading all genres and swimming is my all time favorite sport. I am never sure if swimming is a sport or not. I am independent, yet a team player, conservative yet open to new ideas, a go- getter who also knows where to draw the line. Last but not least I thrive when faced with challenges. I have seen my best work come forth at my lowest moments. I am proudly me with no regrets.
Kisakye Moses (Uganda)
I am a male aged 25, currently I am a student at Uganda Christian University undertaking Bachelor’s Degree in Social Work and social Administration ( SWASA).I have just returned from my internship with Child2Youth Foundation an Organization that supports sponsorship for vulnerable children, community development, sowing hope initiative for HIV /AIDS victims, water and sanitation. I am due to complete my course in July 2011.
I have participated in different Community Driven Development projects as a volunteer and i have gained experience in dealing with different vulnerable groups such as orphans and widows.
I have been a member of the interact club of St.Lawrence citizens high school and i was the coordinator / chairperson of the club. As a leader i gained a considerable amount of experience especially in communication and coordination of the different activities/projects that the club undertook.
I love reading books about life experiences , how to prosper in life ,religious books among others I also like traveling ,meeting new people, learning new things sports i.e football and rugby ,watching movies especially action and love stories. I come from a family of 11 and i am the last born, i come from the central part of Uganda (Buganda) and my favorite dish is matooke and chicken.
Student Progress
We had 11 students from 7 countries complete a total of 13 books in February. These students were from Ghana, Kenya, Mali, Nigeria, Rwanda, Uganda and USA.
Dennis Korbla Amego Penu (Ghana)
· Unlimited Power
Ann Perez Omenye (Kenya)
· Jonathan Livingston Seagull
· As A Man Thinketh
Modibo Dembele (Mali)
· Goals!
Adedeji Adedoyin (Nigeria)
· Nonviolent Communication
Ayoade Anthony (Nigeria)
· Long Walk to Freedom
Edwin Joel (Nigeria)
· In Search for Meaning
Joseph Philip Abue (Nigeria)
· The Grip of Death
Marcus Edibogi Akor (Nigeria)
· How to Win Friends and Influence People
Placide Kibogo (Rwanda)
· Giant Steps
Kisayke Moses
· Jonathan Livingston Seagull
· As A Man Thinketh
Nicole “Lindzee” Lindholm (USA)
· Elie Wiesel Memoirs
Statistics
New Enrollments
7 in February
11 in 2012
Book Assessments
13 in February
38 in 2012
Books Shipped
7 in February
19 in 2012
Cost of books
$131.42 in February
$446.23 in 2012
You Make It Possible
We extend a special thanks to the following individuals and/or organizations who contributed to IIGL last month. Your ongoing support makes this work possible.
Deb Silver (Israel)
Edmee DiPauli (UK)
Felix Iziomoh (Nigeria)
Afere Lawrence (Nigeria)
Deb Rosen (USA/WI)
Lily Ann (USA/FL)
DM Tilley (USA/AL)
Janis Thayer (USA.NC)
Corine Wilson (USA.FL)
Judith Mayer (USA/CA)
Thomas Miller (USA/MI)
Julie Loosbrock (USA/WI)
Lynne Murguia (USA/AZ)
Charles Betterton (USA/AZ)
John Hornecker (USA/CA)
Wanda Gail Campbell (USA/AL)
Michael Lightweaver (USA/NC)
Janae & Barry Weinhold (USA/NC)
Make A Difference
Dream Team 22
In January 2009 we launched a new idea which blends two previous endeavors: The Master Mind Group and the 22 Experiment. We are calling this Dream Team 22 and our goal is to have 220 people contributing $22 per month. We understand that money is energy and that to sustain and build IIGL we need a lot of people pouring their energy into this endeavor on a regular basis. We also know that not everyone can afford to commit $22 a month – especially our students, who live in countries with economies in which this amount can be equal to a weeks salary. So we are offering two options for those who wish to become a part of the Dream Team. One can commit to a $22 a month contribution or to spending 22 seconds each day holding the vision of IIGL becoming financially sustainable by the end of 2009.
contact Michael for details: lightweave@aol.com
Checks on US banks, payable to the International Institute For Global Leadership, can be mailed to PO Box 18909, Asheville, NC. 28814, USA. Contributions may also be made by credit card by clicking the link below. Contributions are tax deductible under the 501 (c) 3 tax code of the United States Internal Revenue Service.
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