Leadership Academy Rolls Up Sleeves for Back-to-School

On 10 November, a group from the Gondwana Leadership Academy spent their Care Trust session doing the work itself.

Every Leadership Academy group spends a session with the Environment and Social Impact (ESI) department and the Care Trust. This time, instead of the usual workshop, Care Trust Manager Ndapwa Alweendo and ESI Manager Quintin Hartung gave a short overview of the Trust’s history and purpose, and then the whole group got to see it in action.

Around 20 Leadership Academy participants and trustees, alongside the Care Trust team and our interns, spent the morning at the packing site at Heja Lodge, preparing this year’s Back-to-School bags. The target is 3,500 and we packed over 300 bags in one morning.

The volunteers did all of it: packing bags, writing encouragement cards and filling in name tags. Each tag has space for the learner’s name, grade or age and school, and every one is handwritten before it goes on a bag.

Many hands behind each bag

Volunteering on site is one of several ways colleagues take part. Others include writing cards and the help we get from our Warehouse Team. Our Brand and Marketing colleagues help us capture the work we do. The tags themselves were made by the Production Department in the Operations Team, and Namibia2Go provides the vehicle that carries the team and supplies to the packing site every day. Behind them are the suppliers and partners who donate or give in-kind support, which is why a project this size depends on partnership.

For Ume Goldbeck, Team Trainer and Leadership Coach at Gondwana Academy, it was a meaningful morning, and she thanked the team for “helping so many Namibian children start their school year with a smile.”

Why it matters

The day reflects one of Gondwana’s sixteen values: “You can only be successful if you make others successful.” For a group of colleagues who lead teams across the company, a morning spent with the Care Trust is a simple way to see what that means. The people on the other end are children we won’t meet, who will open a bag and find that someone took the time to create a bag just for them.

Thank you to everyone who gave their morning!