ROTAMIRROR MAY ISSUE RotaMirror, May Issue '19, Rotaract Club of Kololo | Página 7

Joe Nuwamanya: The
Inspiration
Who is Joe Nuwamanya?
I serve as the District Youth Service Vice-chair working under the able leadership of Emma
Mbaga in Tanzania. I am also the Charter and Past President of Kampala Metropolitan.
I am both a former Interactor and Rotaractor at the Rotaract Club of Kampala City. I am
an architectural designer. I am also a family man and my motto is God, Family, Design,
and Rotary. Outside Rotary, I am a car enthusiast. I love jazz, travel, I love gadgets and
experimenting with buildings.
How did you organize this year’s RYLA?
The District Governor wanted to change the experience of the RYLA to something more
transformational. We had a small budget and companies are fatigued. So we decided to
cut our cloth according to our size. This called for doing business differently with the
little resources we had. We focused on youth who had excelled in their communities and
targeted three categories: social entrepreneurs, youth leaders and business entrepreneurs.
We reached out to Rotary Clubs and asked them nominate and sponsor suitable candidates.
We also used Rotaractors to nominate young people in their communities and radio adverts
and Facebook live to reach out to potential participants. We held regional trainings in Mbale,
Kiira in Wakiso, Jinja and Mbarara and trained over 400 youth including 200 non-Rotaract
youth who we hope will join Rotaract clubs and later Rotary.
Why do you love working with young people?
They remind me of my youth and they keep me young. I like the energy they bring and I like
to mentor the youth. I have made a couple of mistakes growing up and I want to reach out
to them to share my experiences and help them to try and avoid making similar mistakes.
What is the success of this year’s RYLA?
The past RYLAs have been organized with budgets of over UGX200m. As I mentioned
earlier, we used the resources we got from the Rotary clubs and worked with a budget of
UGX48m and held transformational trainings in different regions in Uganda.
This has taught me that we can hold inexpensive and highly impactful RYLAs and have
facilitators travel to the regions instead of bringing youth from around the country to a
single location.
The regional RYLA’s this year focused on value addition, managing service projects, and
soft skills- communication skills, public speaking, etiquette and personal branding. We
also shared business tips on registration, source financing, value addition to products,
digital marketing and record keeping. We inspired the attendees to be bold fearless youth
who can do anything they set their minds on.
We encouraged accountability to the sponsoring Rotary clubs and asked the youth to
report back to their sponsoring clubs on their lessons from the trainings and how it is
changing their lives. We also encouraged clubs to let Rotaractors take over their clubs as
a way to practice their leadership skills.
Adopted from the Wave, April 2019 issue
Posted by Catherine Njuguna
https://rotaryd9211.org/Stories/joe-nuwamanya-the-inspiration
Image from Urithi Africa magazine
https://urithiafrica.com/current-issue-article-1/
ROTAMIRROR May Issue 2019
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