GIFT OF YALI Mandela Washington Fellowship

The Mandela Washington Fellowship for Young African Leader's is the flagship of President Barack Obama,s YOUNG AFRICAN LEADERS INITATIVE (YALI) that empowers young people through academic coursework, leadership training, and networking.
The "fellows" who are between 25 and 35 years age, have established records of accomplishment in promoting innovative and positive change in their organisations, institutions communities and countries. Out of 50,000 applications only 1000 were chosen from 49 African countries.
I have had the privilege of meeting YALI Fellows in all the different countries I have been visiting as my colleague on this journey, Janet Manoni, is herself a 2016 YALI fellow.
These Fellows have not only hosted us but also organised a programme of meetings with organisations and individuals active in healing, education, farming, social work and care, human rights. This has given me the opportunity to meet remarkable people doing wonderful work throughout Africa. Doctors, Nurses, Social workers, Professors, Deans, Superintendents, Directors, Educators, Ministry, hospitals, schools and farms and many NGO's begun and directed by these young people.
I would like to take this opportunity to express my sincere gratitude to you YALI FELLOWS for your wonderful care and organisation during this mission.
As we leave each country Janet says "MISSION ACCOMPLISHED."  YAY thanks to you.
Janet herself has an NGO -FoCC - Friends of Children with Cancer. In this organisation she cares for the child in hospital, the support to the family, organising funding for the needs and expenses of medication, education in the hospital so the children who might be in hospital for several years have a school within the hospital, volunteers to help, bringing awareness to all about cancer in children so that children can be treated before it is too late - she can boast 85% children can be cured if treated early enough, and those that do not survive - she sees that they have a burial. She has taken on Hydrocephalitis and spinabifida and other non- communicable diseases AND MUCH MORE.
TO QUOTE NELSON MANDELA
"Leadership is behavioural, not positional: The capacity to integrate, motivate, and mobilise others to bring a common aspiration to life is what leadership is all about, not holding positions of formal authority"
Yes Madiba we are all leaders and we need to discover this within ourselves.
The journey continues