#sedyea

I came into contact with SWB in 2007. During this time we were establishing Safe Spaces, a girl’s specific project. Safe Spaces was to function within our organization, South East District Youth Empowerment Association (SEDYEA) in Romotswa, Botswana. In 2005-2008, around the early development of SEDYEA, The City of Toronto and South East District Council (SEDC) partnership was in its prime. As a result, each and every partner that came or any white person who came to Ramotswa, to SEDYEA in particular, was known to be from the City of Toronto. So SWB was also known as the City of Toronto. Later, to me, Julian Caspari became SWB. This was perhaps because he was the only person within SWB that we got to meet regularly. As our personal relationships also got stronger, a conducive environment was created between Julian (SWB) and us (SEDYEA) and I got the chance to even meet more SWB employees, some only through the emails like Heather, as she was always involved, especially when we had discussions around finances.

The funny thing for me is that internally, even today, whenever it is announced that we will be hosting visitors, you will hear our peer educators shouting “Caspari is coming, we have to clean”.

When we first met with SWB, we were in our infant stages. There were no systems, procedures or policies in place. It was through SWB that we began to work on basic systems and procedures especially around finances and administration. Working with Julian always stands out to me as one of our “aha!” moments. Personally, as a leader, it gave me the chance to learn from SWB about putting together a funding proposal. Today, I write proposals with ease but really, the seed was first planted through working with Julian. I continue to say Julian because my understanding of SWB has always been based on Julian’s presence and representation.

In one word, I would personally describe SWB as “education”. SWB’s vision for education has been like that of great philosophers such as Paulo Freire to me, where participation means total involvement.

Our community Garden, which we worked on with SWB, was a great testimony of what local people can do for themselves and their communities through empowerment. Local people must control the process, for if they do not, then they may be used as mere mouth-pieces for ideas produced by others, and what I liked about SWB’s approach was that the point of view they worked within was that of local people.

A community was built through SWB; I got the chance to meet such people as Nish and her great team in Nairobi. My friendship with Julian (as a representation of SWB) grew, a brotherhood was created between us - memories that not even time will take away, guided by a common goal and vision.

SWB has been a different partner from the norm. In fact, our relationship with SWB, or should I say Julian, has been like that of a boy and a girl madly in love and totally honest and faithful to each other. We could discuss matters and issues as open as we possibly could around each other, matters relating to programmes, funding and administration without the fear of being judged or negatively impacting on the partnership.