It’s Friday at Inland Tarp. Heath and Freddie are on their way out of the office, and I gave them a call. One of the things that first impressed me was their willingness to take the time to talk when most people are in a hurry to get out of the office. I was on an investigative mission to learn what the work environment was like at Inland Tarp. I had recently met Glen Knopp, the business owner, who invited the Center for Sharing to help him facilitate a Servant Leadership class, because he is seeking ways to continue implementing servant leadership at all levels of his company. I asked Glen if he would share how well they were doing on implementing the values of Servant Leadership in his company, but he was reluctant—a mark of a true humble servant leader who didn’t want to “toot his own horn.” I asked him if instead I could talk to his managers to get a report card, which is why I talked to Heath and Freddie.

Here’s what I learned about Inland Tarp. The first thing Heath mentioned was their biggest concern: their employees and their families. Early on, they learned that a happy worker is a good worker. A few of the things they do to ensure their employees are happy include a hardship fund, scholarships for kids of employees and continuing education for people working there.

Heath shared with me that he had worked at two different companies before Inland Tarp and there was a noticeable difference when he joined the staff there. He told me that Glen insists on input from all levels of the company, with a firm belief that the best ideas can come from anywhere. Heath mentioned that there were times early on when he felt like management should have just made a decision, but he has come to the realization that valuing the input of all stakeholders, despite taking more time.

When I asked him about Glen, he was quick to praise him—“Glen is humble, diffuses praises and gives credit to God. He’s always caring and gracious.”

Freddie has been at Inland Tarp longer than Heath, and what he had to share was very similar to what I heard from Heath. He shared how he is happy and proud of the environment they’ve been able to create. “God guides us to be servants to our employees and customers.”

One thing that stood out to me that Freddie mentioned was their care for the customers they serve. He told the story of a customer whose daughter had Leukemia who they have been praying for. They meet as a staff to pray for customers like this one. “We believe prayer is the answer—we want to let God minister through prayer.”

Inland Tarp quietly supports various non-profits in the community. One that Freddie mentioned was a men’s ministry that provides furniture to people in need who live in Moses Lake, in addition to several youth organizations.

It sounds like Inland Tarp is doing a good job if you apply the test of a servant led institution: “The difference manifests itself in the care taken by the servant-first to make sure that other people’s highest priority needs are being served. The best test, and difficult to administer, is: Do those served grow as persons? Do they, while being served, become healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, more likely themselves to become servants? And, what is the effect on the least privileged in society? Will they benefit or at least not be further deprived?“

The Center for Sharing’s mission statement is “Calling forth the gifts of all people through Christ Centered community.” We do this by facilitating Servant Leadership development opportunities where people are allowed to explore their gifts and talents as they wrestle with the age old questions of “Why am I here? What am I supposed to do with my life? What am I good at? How can I use that to serve others?”

Out of our work in Kenya, a new ministry was born called SLEC (Servant Leadership and Environmental Conservation)—you can read more about it here on their website: http://www.slecinternational.org. Here are some reflections from course participants shared by Roseanne Mbaya, who has begun to facilitate courses on her own (the Center for Sharing has done several courses over the past 7 years in Kenya).

As you will see, students had just worked through writing their personal mission and visions statements and had done some work to understand their personality types. Here is what the participants had to say:

Jane: I have learnt that we can get our mission and vision from our core values and target groups. I now know my personality type. My personality type can help me now understand why people think and behave the way they do.

Paul: I now know how to write a mission and vision statement and what core values are. It has opened my eyes to see the future. I learnt different personality types. I have been struggling with who I am but through this training I now know me.

Patrick: I now have a vision and mission. The vision I generated surprised me. I have acquired new skills of equipping the community and Church. I was surprised by my personality type, the way I think, behave and do things. I have discovered me. I have seen a renewed Patrick.

Patriciah: I was living without any vision or mission. Now I have a vision and mission. On the personality types, I have received salvation and need to work on my type. I can now handle people because I appreciate their personality types are different from mine. I have learnt a lot and there is going to be change on how I treat people around me.

Ronald: It is amazing the way we have received these teaching. This kind of training keeps you awake. I have learnt about myself. I was resisting knowing me but I finally gave up and began to open up. It was painful looking at ourselves and this will assist us in our spiritual growth. I now know myself and it will help me know others.

Irene: I now have a mission statement and have realized by personality type. I have now understood some of my characteristics I had questions about. I even now know my husband’s personality type is four.

Aloise: I have known how to generate a mission and vision statement. I am glad I got to know my personality type.

Ines Arenas works at Vista Hermosa Elementary School. It was there that she decided that the most important things she was called upon to teach weren’t just the basic academic principles that every student is expected to learn during those years. Ines decided she wanted to use this as an opportunity to teach young people to develop into servant leaders. The following is the story about how that journey began:

By Ines Arenas

When I started writing this article, and I began with the recount of how I came up with the idea of teaching Servant Leadership to children. About a year ago, I was working on preparing a group of fifth and sixth grade students from Vista Hermosa Elementary that would be participating in a Summer Program sponsored by Johns Hopkins University Center for Talented Youth.

We were having some challenges with the students’ behavior, and I wanted those students clearly understand JHU expectations for Student Conduct  and their youth honor code(see an excerpt from that document below).

Expectations for Student Conduct (from Center for Talented Youth at JHU)

We expect our students to meet the highest standards of behavior, both in personal deportment and in dedication to academic pursuits. At each site, students learn about our standards for behavior. While specific rules vary somewhat from site to site, community standards throughout our summer programs are basic and consistent. They apply both in and out of the classroom. They include a commitment to academic and personal integrity, respect for all members of the community, regard for the basic rules of physical safety, and cooperation with adult supervision. To this end, students must adhere to our Honor Code. We cannot accommodate students who are unwilling or unable to live up to these expectations.

Center for Talented Youth Honor Code

CTY’s summer programs provide a unique opportunity for intellectually curious people from diverse backgrounds to come together in pursuit of academic challenge and growth, within a supportive community built on respect, responsibility, and trust. In order to create and sustain such a community:

I promise to uphold academic and personal integrity, to respect the ideas and property of others, and to ensure that those around me do the same; and

I promise to follow the Expectations for Student Conduct:

• Strive to do the best academic work possible.

• Respect individuals of different races, cultures, religions, genders, sexual orientations, ages, disabilities, and national origins.

• Behave in a friendly, cooperative, safe, and responsible manner toward all persons in the CTY community and in the larger campus and local communities.

• Take responsibility for my own work and actions.

• Cooperate with adult supervision.

• Observe rules for physical safety and all other rules for student conduct.

I understand that my actions will shape our site community, and that my membership in the community depends on my honoring this code.

As a result, I found myself explaining to those students what it means to create and sustain a supportive community. We discussed briefly the meaning of respect, responsibility, trust, cooperation, integrity and other topics.

The most challenging idea the students encountered was the idea that they were not only responsible for their own behavior and personal integrity, but that they also were responsible to ensure that those around them will uphold academic and personal integrity.  This was a completely new concept for them.  In their minds their own academic success was a personal victory.  It was a paradigm shift, not easy for them to comprehend, especially in our current world that emphasizes personal achievement.

I remembered the time several years ago when I took a Servant Leadership class from the Center for Sharing, and wondered what it would be like if our students would learn the SL concepts from an early age. Would they be more compassionate, more willing to become Servant Leaders?  I contacted The Center for Sharing, asking for resources to teach SL to children, and a journey began…

Answering my inquiry, Center for Sharing provided me with some resources, although they warned me that all of them missed the spiritual emphasis.  After doing some research and reading some books about Servant Leadership I concluded to the following:

Servant Leadership has a deep and profound meaning, and could also be called values-based leadership.  Servant Leadership brings personal and collective growth.  Servant Leadership is first about deep identity.  SL begins from within.  CHARACTER is central to SL. Everything a person does flows from the inner world (the spiritual life).  Our motives stem from our character, which dictates what we do and how we lead.  Mastering SL is a lifelong learning process.  The SL attributes are the result of developing a highly moral and spiritual character. Character affects everything a person does.  From it flows inner qualities such as values, faith, vision, respect for human dignity, relationship with God, the servant’s attitude and the strategies needed to carry out the work of servant-leadership.

A servant leader may be defined as a leader whose primary purpose for leading is to serve others. A servant-leader displays a genuine desire to serve others for the common good. In servant leadership, self-interest gives way to collective human development.  Though being just a service-oriented person does not qualify one as a servant leader. While serving is essential, SL requires more than serving.  Serving God through serving others reveals the part of a Christian life seen by others.  But we also must consider the part of the life that can’t be seen by others, the inner self, the spiritual life.

Servant leadership is not just an interesting idea, but something fundamental and vital for the world. It moves from being a body of work to being a movement… how we are going to move this into the world. My hope is that our students see life as a mission, not as a career.

If you’d like to support the work of el Centro de Compartimiento, you can online here: http://www.centerforsharing.org/what-we-do/programs/mexico/

FFM was founded in August of 2009 when the Broetje  Orchards chose to set their own sales and marketing business together to represent their fruit instead of working thru a private third party seller.  Nine of the staff from the prior seller moved over to FFM;  we hired 5 people brand new to the industry; and balanced with 9 experienced folks that left competitors.  A part of the “pull” to FFM was the moral structure of Broetje Orchards as a company who desires to practice a code of ethics in the marketplace,  as well as the challenge of the volume of fruit to be sold.  The days are long and fraught in a high volume and high pressure sales environment.   Each week we sell 150-200 full semi-truck loads of fresh apples and pears across the USA and to many nations across the globe.  Each week we provide about 6-7 million pounds of wholesome and healthy food to people across the world.

A large number of the FFM staff are demonstrative Christians who live their lives biblically. I equate the application of SL principles to how I have been taught since early childhood to lead my life.  But this work environment has freed me (and most others) to put our faith to work in new ways. At FFM, I work to empower and trust others to “do their work”.  This means that managers are encouraged to solve problems, manage their assigns in ways that demonstrate caring, and given the opportunity to think independently to solve problems.  I do “oversee” but mostly ask them for their direction and confirm it.

At FFM, we enjoy the ability to help people in experience and growth.  Last year we were able to send 2 staff to the Marylhurst SL conference—compensate them for the cost and not charge them with the days away.  This year we are likely to send 2 more so that they can gain insight into how SL applies to business and to life–and then to apply those principals during the work day.

At FFM, we are remarkably fortunate that the owners set up the business to provide the first portion of profit for FFM employees to allocate to peoples in need across the world.  So FFM, with a portion of those funds, has joined a Central American Non-Profit called Agros International as a corporate sponsor.  Agros uses these funds to establish agricultural production communities in the outback of Honduras and relocates, educates, houses, folks who live in slums on the edges of cities.  Those people can begin to grow economically and in self sufficiency.  FFM staff has the priviledge and unusual ability to travel to this rural settlement to work alongside these people to better the lives and future of their families. Three FFM staff will travel there this summer.

At FFM, our community is still forming, but it helps that we have the opportunity to come together and contribute to the needs of others in a variety of ways.  FFM collectively has provided funds to Broetje orchard employees in 3 or 4 cases of serious need and illness.  We have collected funds internally to help in a number of situations of need in the general Yakima community.  Employees of FFM have taken on a number of help projects to include working at a foodbank and delivering food to elementary kids in need (weekend backpacks of food).   We were able to fund $5000 to the needs in Haiti thru Food for the Poor.  We were able to send funds to help the refugees from Somalia to Kenya thru World Vision.  All of these projects come about because of consideration and agreement within the employees of FFM.  This builds awareness of the world’s needs and a “can help” attitude.  Our business has a 4 person Missions Commission that meets regularly to help move these contributions downstream.  FFM is currently working alongside Jubilee Christian Academy to host a fund raising golf tournament this summer. We believe this describes what it means for us to be about doing business as ministry….servant leadership in action.

FFM board has designated the Opal apple (which Broetje Orchards holds the exclusive North American rights to) as a special gift with a special purpose “Taste the difference, make a difference”.  To “make a difference”, we set aside 25c per case from each sale and asked the retailer/customer to do the same.  Of course the production of this exclusive variety will increase over time, but this year we generated a fund pool of $20,000.  In working to find a “difference”, we found Katie Stagliano of Katie’s Krops. As a 10 year old she grew a cabbage, and donated it to a soup kitchen near her home in S. Carolina. As she helped serve the cabbage soup that night, she realized this was a way for her to make a difference. She recruited her 4^th grade classmates and planted a really big garden.  They donated the food to the soup kitchen and her 4^th grade friends prepared and served and ate with the homeless.  Now with the help of Opal, Katie and her mom plan to provide funds to plant 35 gardens by grade schoolers across the nation to provide food to those in need.  FFM is a small part of this story.

By Luke Hallowell

When I first met Jay Ballinger, what first impressed me was his ability to listen. Jay has the unique ability to make you feel heard—like he’s listening with his entire being. Jay participated in the Center for Sharing’s six week course in Servant Leadership during the past year, and I quickly learned that Jay is deeply committed to becoming the best Servant Leader he can be.

This wasn’t the first time Jay had heard about Servant Leadership. Jay is in the process of finishing a Master’s degree from Gonzaga University with an emphasis in Servant Leadership. He’s read extensively about the subject and many of those who know him well thought he would quickly continue towards a doctorate in SL. However, Jay had an idea—he shared that he wasn’t interested on focusing solely on the theory of SL, but that he has a deep desire to put SL principles into practice.

He shared a new idea they decided to put into practice at his company, a lubricant distribution company called Tyco Inc, after they completed the Servant Leadership course. As a team, they committed to the idea of a morning huddle—not just a hoo-rah type of meeting, but one where they have the opportunity to share about what’s going on outside of work and  intentionally building community rather than just being content to be a collection of people who happen to work at the same place.

As a result of that meeting, several members of the team have shared personal things that are going on in their lives, and the rest of the team has worked together to support and pray for the member that is struggling. It reminds me of a bible passage in 1 Corinthians 12 that says, “If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together.”

In addition, this course has helped prompt Jay and others to form a group in the larger community of Moses Lake with a common focus of serving their community as leaders. He shows a deep commitment to the growth of people in his community. His desire to be more aware of the happenings in his community displays another important characteristic of a Servant Leader. We believe that the work Jay is doing in the Moses Lake community is creating lasting and positive change. If you’d like to be part of our next course in Servant Leadership, don’t hesitate to call us at 509.546.5999.

By Luke Hallowell

First off, we want to share that our views are possibly a bit biased. Here at the Center for Sharing, we’ve been beneficiaries of the hard labor of immigrants, and are intentionally located in an immigrant community. Without the generosity of Broetje Orchards and the wonderful people who work there—many of whom are immigrants, the Center for Sharing probably wouldn’t exist and certainly wouldn’t be able to do much of the work we do today. Having said that, we also recognize that we live in a city that is nearly 30 percent immigrant and often find our community is divided and misinformed on the issues of immigration.

Here in our local Tri-Cities community, the divided state of our nation on this issue became very apparent when candidate Loren Nichols ran for city council and proposed that undocumented immigrants should be shot at the border or be put to death—a statement that defies the rule of law this country was built on. To our surprise he still received twenty seven percent of the votes in that election and took 2^nd place. As an organization dedicated to developing servant leaders, we’d like to take a hard look at what servant leadership has to teach us about how we should respond to the dilemma facing our country.

Robert Greenleaf’s test of servant leadership, which is difficult to administer in many situations, states the following:

“Do those served grow as persons? Do they, while being served, become healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, more likely themselves to become servants? And, what is the effect on the least privileged in society? Will they benefit or at least not be further deprived?”

We believe simply applying this test to the immigration debate helps bring a great deal of clarity to what our leaders should do. However, many of these immigrants have been dehumanized and alienated to the point that many don’t believe this test should apply to them. That somehow they don’t deserve the opportunity to be served, to grow, to become healthier, wiser, freer or more autonomous. They are referred to as “illegals,” as if they mere existence is against the law.

What would be the best way to ensure the immigrants who live here grow as people? Should we deport them all? Should we shoot them at the border, as Mr. Nichols suggests? Or should we care about them– where they are from and why they are here?  Should we alienate them and deprive them of their rights? Or should we see how we can be a part of their growth as families and individuals? The answers to these questions will determine the future of our country.

We need your help. We believe this country is great because of our ability to discuss issues like immigration with civility and to find a way to make a world that works for everyone. We’d like to start a conversation about servant leadership and immigration, using the book “Welcoming the Stranger” as a guide to our discussion. If you’d like to be a part of that, we’d love to hear from you. Please contact Luke by phone at 509.546.5999 or via email at luke@centerforsharing.org. We’d like to create a group of thoughtful servant leaders who can help this community, state and nation make wise choices with regards to the way we treat immigrants to our country.

Notes From: Walk Out Walk On: A Learning Journey Into Communities Daring To Live The Future Now

www.walkoutwalkon.net

(Wheatley and Frieze)

Notes By Cheryl Broetje

What does it mean: daring to live the future now? For those who try it, we experience what’s possible when we change our beliefs about what people are capable of and how change happens…for all, not just a few. When we abandon hope of being saved by the perfect or heroic leader or perfect program and instead, look inside of our community we can see there are resources and wisdom already there.

When people walk out on subscribing to a world of scarce resources, limiting belief, destructive individualism, and instead, choose to walk on together, we find out what is truly possible.

Healthy and resilient communities have learned to trust themselves, find solutions to challenges, take control of their future. They develop greater capacities as they learn what works and how to work together. They become confident that they can deal with whatever problem confronts them next. In the face of hunger, poverty, economic injustice, ill health, etc. they respond, adapt and invent.

These experiences can become trans-local as discoveries in one community inspire other communities. Diverse peoples learn from them and try their own local experiments.

Inside dying systems are those few leaders who refuse to work from dominant values that permeate the bureaucracy…like speed, greed, fear and aggressiveness. They champion values and practices that respect people, rely on others inherent motivation, creativity and caring to get quality work done. They create protected places where people can practice.

Pioneers have to expect to feel ignored, invisible and lonely…what they are doing is so new and different that others can’t see their work even when its staring them in the face. That’s why it’s so important that pioneers work as community, encouraging each other through trials and risks natural to those giving birth to the new in the midst of the breakdown of the old. Each community has unique and invisible qualities of place, including social and cultural heritage.

Notes on ‘scaling up’/’scaling over’: Scaling up is about replication of uniformity, standardization,, franchising, a formula…mono culture on a global scale. The local is suppressed. We patent a product, standardize a process, franchise a formula in order to produce maximum growth. Best practices are studied and disseminated, with the belief that what has been invented in one place can be parachuted, transferred into another. Often these ‘best practices don’t work. This view assumes that organizations are machines.

But communities are not machines. It is said that people only support what they create. What works is when teams from one organization travel to another and through that experience see themselves more clearly, strengthen their relationships and renew their creativity. These learning journeys disrupt our old ways of seeing and widen our view of what’s possible.

This ‘scaling over’ (instead of ‘scaling up’) preserves a deep reverence for the uniqueness of place. By visiting one another, we can come to see ourselves more clearly…carry new insights home and develop them in our own unique, local way. In order to build healthy and resilient communities, we must walk the pace of the slowest…we can’t leave anyone behind. This is the practice of solidarity. Speed is not the goal. Growth is not the primary purpose. Winning is not evidence of our success. What gifts can we discover as we slow down, look around, invite more people in and enjoy the journey together?

For communities that choose to go down this path, there are several important questions to ask themselves:

• What are we walking out on?
• Who are we choosing to be?
• What is our name?
• Whom will we connect with for nourishment?
• What stories will illuminate our path?

Our actions, no matter how small,  are a declaration of our new identity: we are walk outs, who walk on. We accept the risk, step onto the invisible path, and walk into the unknown. And there, we discover the many beautiful people already bringing this new world into form.

“You thought I knew where the road was and you followed me.

But no, I didn’t know where the road was.

We had to make the road together.

And that is what we did.

That’s how we got where we wanted to be.

We made the road. It wasn’t there.”

(from Zapatista Stories)

Titit's old house

At home with Titit and her new house

This is a story shared by our friends in the Philippines, who went through the servant leadership course as a community and as a result decided to form the Center for Servant Leadership, Philippines. This is a story of the  power of prayer and transformation that can happen when we are aware of God’s call to reach out to a broken and hurting world. 

By Ruth Ortega with Francis Hernandez

One of my favorite essays is Elizabeth O’Connor’s  “Who Hears Prayers?” In the story, two old, mentally ill women dominate the scene – one kneeled to pray and the other taunted her – “Get up woman! God don‟t hear your prayer!” O‟Connor then poses the question to herself, “Does God hear her prayer?” “Then I remembered. God is in me and where I am God is. The real question was, Did I hear her prayer? What would it mean to hear her prayer?”

In CSLP’s new curriculum, one of our subjects is the “Outer Journey”. This is where students are encouraged to go out of our gates and be a part of other communities, listening to people‟s stories and learning through action and reflection. In fact, as a result of this subject, almost every house in Guinhawa (our local community) has been entered by a CSLP student. We were all struck by the story of our senior student, Francis and his group, after they visited the home of Maritess Ugbac – whom they call Titit.

Similar to the women in O‟Connor‟s article, Titit is mentally ill. She has four children – ages 12, 10, 9, and 5. Her husband, age 74, suffered from a stroke in 1995 and since then had a hard time providing for the family. He earns a little money from fishing but spends it mostly on alcohol and gambling as a temporary escape from his destitute life. Titit does the neighbor‟s laundry and earns Php200 ($4.80) per week. Our students noticed Titit’s house and how unaccommodating it is for her family. The roof leaks and its one small room doubles as a living room and a bedroom for the couple and three of their children. The house is lopsided because its wood pillars are about to collapse.

During the first visits with Titit there was little cheer in her face. We wondered – what would Titit be praying about? Actually, Titit stopped praying a long time ago – she figured God didn’t hear her prayers anyways. But Francis and his group made sure that after every visit they ended with a prayer. It didn‟t take long until Francis‟ groupmate, Angie heard Titit‟s prayer. (Angie and her family lost their house to a fire set by her alcoholic father who later abandoned them. Her eyes are very keen on the need of people for houses.) A week later, the students contributed from their small allowances for house materials and gathered sasa leaves for pawid (a traditional style roof in the Philippines) from the CSLP farm. CSLP cut down mahogany trees for wood and altogether the community worked as one to replace Titit’s house anew. Now, a typical Filipino house (nipa hut) is rising for Titit and her family. Of course it was much more fun doing things WITH them than doing things TO them. Titit’s family shared their resources and contributed to the house construction.

Her neighbors and relatives once in a while pop in and ask questions. “Will you be requiring Titit to go to Guinhawa Church on Sundays?” However, we are more convicted of bringing Jesus to the people instead of JUST telling them to come to Jesus. But still, Titit went to Guinhawa Bible Church the next Sunday. When I saw her, her slightly cheerful face has bloomed to a radiance of joy and freedom. She had a different aura, far from the depressing image she was the last time I saw her. She didn”t return to church the next Sunday, but our CSLP community continues to help her. Then arose another question, “Why are you building a house for them for free?” Why? – because God DOES answer prayers! God has all the answers but He doesn’t give it all by Himself. We are God’s partners, his eyes, ears, hands, and feet!

Amazingly, this act of looking through God‟s eyes with compassion and love to our neighbors has been contagious.
Guinhawa Bible Church, located eight meters from our CSLP compound, saw how we worked as a community. This caused them to reflect on their role as partners in building God’s kingdom. They realized that, what they used to think was impossible, was actually possible. The church has now “left their gates” as well – and they have started building a house for the homeless in their community. I like the words “contagious community.” May it be that the CSLP community, with the love of Christ it has experienced be able to infect love in those who are searching for it in their prayers, and become contagious themselves. God does hear prayers.

If you’d like to support the work that the Center for Sharing is doing in the Philippines and around the world, please visit this page: http://www.centerforsharing.org/involved/donate/

Thanks for your support!

By Salome Meeme

I attended Servant Leadership Seminar (SLS) that was held in September, 2007 in Kisumu.  The seminar was meant for Western Kenya Ministers and I was privileged to be among the only two lay people in the session.

I feel very privileged to have attended, because after going through the seminar  I kept on asking myself two questions:-

1. Am I devoted to serving the needs of those I served?  Do they grow as persons; do they while being served become healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, more likely themselves to become servants (Greenleaf).
2. What is my stake in serving the less privileged in the community, do they benefit from my service? Do I serve them with commitment and passion?

I specifically started thinking on how to improve and support the much needed attitude of service—an attitude where service to each other takes little or no effort. My focus has been pulling out of the self-serving, domineering kind of attitude so that I can provide better service to those I serve.

Greenleaf said “it begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first.  Then conscious choice brings one to aspire to lead.”  I challenged myself on whether my service brought out the best to those I serve, lead and mentor.  In the organizational set up, I realized that if my services are good, other employees will be satisfied, customers and other stakeholders are satisfied and thus are willing to trust in me & the organization, and this positively impacts the overall performance of the organization.

My work has been mainly administrative duties and supporting other offices. SLS helped me realize that I can lead through the power of relationships with others which is made possible when I bring the spirit of servant hood to work.  I also try creating an empowering work environment by providing joy and fulfillment in meaningful work to those I supervise and support. Listening has been a key to my service; I learned that one can easily identify the needs of those that we serve and more importantly focus on not only meeting their needs but accomplishing them as well.  It is a powerful tool that can help build communities and give opportunities to the most vulnerable and avert further deprivation to the less privileged.

SL is a long term, transformational approach to life and work.  The last two years have been challenging for me.  I, however, realized that building the right attitude, with patience, perseverance, and above all foresight was a key to realizing my dreams.  It is not a quick fix approach.  SLS helped me dream and have the right attitude beyond the challenges and obstacles that I faced.

SLS has also taught me to groom and build others so that they can better serve the community and assume leadership roles.   Currently, I am working for a community-based organization dealing with humanitarian issues, ranging from reduction of poverty, provision of clean water and access to proper sanitation, environmental conservation and adaptation of climate change. I also work on empowering the less privileged (women and the poor) to support vulnerable and marginalized communities. I lend administrative support to over fifteen (15) programs. SLS has come in handy since serving communities—and especially the vulnerable people groups in them has been my vocation. SL has been my guiding philosophy; it has offered me personal growth spiritually, professionally, emotionally as well as intellectually.

In conclusion, I thank God I met Cheryl and Glenn who made me realize my potential as a Servant Leader and even more for genuinely believing in me and my service.  This has helped me “dream big dreams,” endeavor to make a difference whenever I have an opportunity, and impact someone’s life.

Thank you.

Salome Meeme