Follow-Up from Marrakech

Dear Leaders –

Eid Mubarak! I hope you are well-rested and well-fed after a studious and successful week in Marrakech. We will be posting the notes from various sessions over the next two weeks. These will be posted in open forums so that you can add to the notes as well!

Thank you again for your hard work, dedication and commitment to yourselves, each other and your causes. To those of you who could not come: we missed you very much! You were in our thoughts and there in spirit.

Each of you should feel proud of what you have accomplished to date:

In Rabat – you found the confidence to lead.
Your assignment was to go home, get organized, find greater balance in your life, draw strength from your mentors, articulate your motivation, expand your network, professionalize your image, and come back with a solid project that would change the lives of people in your community. You did it!

In Marrakech – you created the strategy to lead.
You saw the inter-connectedness of community service with civic engagement and with greater power for change. You communicated your visions; you determined a timeline and approximate budget; you began to create your plans for visibility and marketing; and you began to talk about finding and securing resources.

For next time – the accountability of leadership.
I challenge you in the next 100 days to launch your projects and intervene in the lives of at least 30 others to make your community a better place for them.

What will it take?

• Sustainability – a vision for how your project can sustain itself.

• Speaking ability – greater number of speaking opportunities to raise your visibility and self-evaluations of your performances.

• Awareness – how many people each helped to inspire or join your effort.

• Education – learn new skills (i.e. ICT, language, or anything that contributes to your professional development and your project)

• Ability to use Technology – FlipCamera spots!! Capture your stories, the voices of the people who you are trying to help.

• Time Management – work on your projects evenly and integrate them into everyday.

• Networking – meet important people to whom you can explain your projects, assessing after a weeks how many new people know about your project who didn’t in November.

• Resources – find money, time, people, in-kind donations.

• Media – get free ads placed or stories written.

• Authenticity – take stock of how committed your are to your leadership path and to your causes.

• Ambition – make opportunities for yourselves and see opportunities for others.

• Teamwork – regularly engage as a member of this team, both online and offline and share the stories and lessons from Marrakech with your sisters who couldn’t make it.

Our next gathering in Morocco will be in early 2010 (most likely the first week of March) and, in addition to reinforcing the training themes of past events, will focus more on networks and civic activism.

**Please check your calendars to let Sarah and I know of potential scheduling conflicts so we can secure a date as soon as possible.

Much more to come.

With much gratitude and respect,
Gabi