August 2016
The Incredible Kigali Experience Marwa Daly
IFMSA Liaison Officer to Student Organizations AssociaMed - Tunisia
loso@ifmsa.org
“Life is so full of unpredictable beauty and strange surprises. Sometimes that beauty is too much for me to handle. Do you know that feeling? When something is just too beautiful? When someone says something or writes something or plays something that moves you to the point of tears, maybe even changes you.” - Mark Oliver Everett, Things The Grandchildren Should Know That’s exactly what I felt when I attended pre African Regional Meeting 2015. In December, Kigali was the host of the magnificent event. All together reunited for one cause, one vision: women and girls’ empowerment. I had the honor to get selected as a trainer of Training African Medical Young Leaders-TAMYL along with talented trainers Alaa Ibrahim, Joel Gasana and Hassen Jaffer. The training aimed to equip future African health professionals with the skills and knowledge needed to take on leadership roles locally and globally by providing a forum for students interested in global public health to network, exchanging ideas and learning about each others’ experiences of health. The agenda was based on soft skills such as communication strategies, leadership skills , project management, fundraising but also advanced such as negotiation skills, stakeholders’ mapping and from MDGs to SDGs. The outcomes of the workshop were: 1. Helping participants develop techniques and methods to increase the quality of the programs and activities offered by the national members organisations, and to train them in team building and leadership skills to ensure well supported projects locally, nationally and regionally; 2. Increasing collaboration between the national member organisations of the Region, in supporting www.ifmsa.org
/ifmsa
@ifmsa
a the development of a network of the youthled initiatives showing the importance of extraorganisational approach; 3. Increasing visibility and greater representation of the African region members within the Federation activities; 4. Increasing self confidence of medical students in their abilities to become health leaders; 5. Ultimately, changing the culture and attitudes of medical students such that in the future, all students and doctors are able to consider their practice of medicine within a local, national and global context. The workshop was genuinely full of energy and potential with amazing participants who were not only engaged in the agenda but also came up with with tremendous initiatives afterwards. Special thanks to the incredible participants that are the ultimate success of the workshop and for making this training an incredible experience for all of us and the awesome co-trainers Alaa, Hassan and Joel who contributed so much to the agenda.