Catalyze June 22

THE WORK OF
CORPSAFRICA AND
STARTING AN NGO
CATALYZE MAGAZINE | 9
B Y : B A R B Q U A I N T A N C E , V I C E
P R E S I D E N T A A R P ,
E N T E R P R I S E A W A R D S
A N D L I Z F A N N I N G , F O U N D E R
& E X E C U T I V E D I R E C T O R A T
C O R P S A F R I C A
Liz Fanning:
It's like the Peace Corps, but we give college-educated, young Africans the chance to
serve like Peace Corps volunteers in their own countries. We have a month of preservice
training, and then it's 10 months of living in a remote high poverty community
with local people. Their role is unlike the Peace Corps in that our volunteers go to their
sites with no preexisting agenda. We train them in human-centered design, which is
sort of a structure to the facilitation process and problem-solving tools to help the
local people identify their highest priority development needs and to come up with a
project to address that need. The volunteers help the communities implement that
project by connecting them to resources. I think the most important lesson our
volunteers take away from their year of service is humility. It's really about not being
the savior themselves. They are not going to change the world themselves. These
projects don't happen by the volunteers. They happen through them. Their role is to
be the facilitator and the liaison, and really give ownership to the local people. So it's
really gotta be about what the local people want. That's probably the most important
aspect of CorpsAfrica, the most important core value, but it's also about locals helping
locals. Local people, helping local people rather than the outside saviors coming in,
being the ones with all the answers and all the funding. We're also committed to
creating a culture of philanthropy in Africa. So that development efforts are also locally
owned and locally led.