How Cultivating Local Leaders Transformed a Kenyan Village

The sound of children's laughter fills the air as a group of kids kick a homemade soccer ball on a dusty field in rural Kenya. Their coach and mentor, James, looks on with pride. Just a few years ago, many of these children had no access to organized activities or positive role models in their community.

James was one of those kids. Although he excelled at soccer, he struggled to imagine a future for himself in his small village. That changed when he connected with African Leadership, an organization that empowers leaders like James to create change in their own communities. Through training and mentorship from local experts, James gained the skills and confidence to establish a youth soccer program. Now he's guiding the next generation to reach their potential.

Stories like James' demonstrate why African Leadership's model is so impactful. Rather than bringing in outside "heroes" and solutions, they start by listening to African leaders themselves. What unique challenges do they face? What support and resources would help them turn their vision into reality? By building networks of African experts across sectors, African Leadership can provide tailored mentorship rooted in a nuanced cultural understanding.

This approach holds valuable insights for nonprofit marketers and fundraisers seeking to authentically engage diverse audiences. As Emily Blackledge, African Leadership's president, stresses, organizational culture and values must permeate marketing campaigns. Every communication should reinforce your ministry's collective purpose, not glorify individual donors or staff as saviors.

Additionally, stories focused solely on material outputs - X number of shirts distributed! Y number of buildings constructed! - often fall flat. While facts are important, it's human experiences and emotions that compel people to action. When crafting marketing content, identify shared feelings that transcend cultures - isolation, hopelessness, the joy of human connection. These narratives invite donors into your work as partners, not heroes to be placated.

If these concepts resonate with you, where can you look for more inspiration? Blackledge suggests reading widely across sectors, from hospitality to medicine and beyond. Rather than reinventing wheels, leverage proven frameworks that align with your organizational values. Harvard Business Review's insights on change management, for example, helped African Leadership navigate an internal transition.

Of course, no model or expert holds all the answers. As Blackledge acknowledges, leaders must also give themselves permission to "flop around" sometimes. Experimentation and mistakes fuel growth. Still, it's wise to learn from others whenever possible on the path toward positive change.

So where will your journey lead next? Will you commit to elevating diverse voices and perspectives? To telling stories that unite rather than divide? Will you join African Leadership in walking alongside courageous local leaders like James? The potential for impact begins with a single step.

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Transcription

00:00:04
            

Well, hey there, everyone. Welcome back to another episode of Holy Donuts. Today I am joined by Emily Blackledge from Africa leadership. How you doing today, Emily? I'm great.        

00:00:13
            

How are you? I am good. Well, thank you so much for joining me today. I am really excited to dive into what you all do. Your story, I know it's gonna be a little bit different than maybe some of the stuff we commonly talk about or just kind of a different way to get there.        

00:00:28
            

And so why don't you first tell us a little bit about your story, how you came to the ministry, what you all do. Give us kind of the high level overview of it. Yeah, great. African leadership is an organization that works in Africa. Shocker.        

00:00:42
            

And really is built on the premise and the belief that the old paradigm and way of doing things is kind of broken. When you take your ideas and plans somewhere else and try to transpose them, they don't often, often work out very well. Anybody in the international development space can attest to what I'm talking about, just how many buildings don't work, or, you know, programs get tweaked. And so our approach has always been, for the last 25 years, to just start with the Africans. So we have built a massive network that we've got 90,000 people in our network across the continent of Africa who have skill sets in leadership, in pastor training, in community development and trauma care.        

00:01:27
            

And they walk with leaders who God's put a call in their heart, and just like, a leader here, God puts a call in your heart, and you're like, how the freak are we gonna accomplish that? How do you do it? What is, do I have to have a 501 C three? Do I need a CFO? Like, we have all the same questions, and so.        

00:01:45
            

And so do Africans. And so as they try to live out the calling of what God's given, given them a vision for, they don't, like, do we register? Do we go to the US and register there and make money there? Like, how do we do it? And we have, since we've been around for 25 years, we have, like, a massive expertise among Africans on how to build and how to build in Sierra Leone versus Malawi versus South Sudan.        

00:02:09
            

And so we have leaders in all of Africa that walk alongside other leaders as they live out what God's calling them to build uniquely in their space and kind of struggle with, like, where. How do I fit my family into this? And how do I make money? And do I have to have a day job? You know, just all the questions that we start off with.        

00:02:30
            

So Al is a group of african leaders who walk with other leaders to build Africa their way. That's great. That's great. And so how did you get involved with Al originally? Originally I got married and moved to Nashville and didn't know what to do.        

00:02:46
            

I have, all of my degrees are in economic development and post conflict rebuilding, specifically in Africa. And when I moved to Nashville, there were a few entities that did that. My husband was in music, is in music. So he was gone all the time. And I didn't, we didn't have kids, so I just started volunteering at Al and kind of flopped into spending time in Africa and fell in love with my friends there and colleagues there and kind of never left.        

00:03:15
            

And all of the people above me just kept quitting. Sudden or retiring. And so a, yeah, somehow the board looked at me ten years ago and said, take it. They said, you're up. You're up to swing.        

00:03:28
            

Yeah. What's been surprising about your role so far? Oh, gosh, all of it.        

00:03:38
            

I think the surprising thing for me personally has just been loving, leading, loving. I think the role that I love the most at Al is how important culture is that what benefits packages we offer and what we say in a marketing pitch and who we go after as a partner in Africa completely changes the sauce. And so it matters. I get to keep a reign and play with and build by bringing in a team member, bringing in an african partner or pulling the rug out from under. Like, I don't like that campaign.        

00:04:21
            

Change it entirely. All of those things affect our team and affect our culture. And so I have been surprised that I would like that because I would have told you, like, I just want to go do that stuff over there with those Africans and not have to mess in the, the busy network. That's great. That's great.        

00:04:41
            

So you sit in the present seat. A lot of the folks listening are going to be in marketing development. Be the kind of like voice of reason in the room for them for a moment. What do you wish that marketing and donor teams knew that maybe, you know, as president, right? Like, so speaking on behalf of all the presidents and ministries, speak into them a little bit from your seat of like, what do you wish they know that maybe they, they don't think of on a regular basis.        

00:05:10
            

It's probably a little bit of that culture piece. I think my, the team of people that I have around me that do marketing and fundraising and communication, they are driven to go and to accomplish. They, in a lot of other worlds would be in sales. Like, they would be performance objective based people. Like, I want this metric.        

00:05:31
            

And so they are, like, ready to go all day long. And I think what is challenging for me is to sit in a. Sat in a room the other day. We are kind of redesigning our feel and our look with our donor audience. And so I could sit in the room, and I knew I was frustrating every single one of them, but because I said, like, hey, this landing page and this invitation to this event is not.        

00:05:55
            

It doesn't feel not right. Like, and I can't tell you what's wrong with it. Like, I just know if part of my. If part of the responsibility that I hold is, like, how we get there matters, how people experience us matters. I often don't know what I want.        

00:06:14
            

I can just tell you when it's wrong. Like, I can tell you when the white that I want to paint my living room is the wrong white, but I don't know which one it is until it's there. And so I think that's it's challenging for my team because I can give more. I also appreciate that that means I bring more criticism often and not like, oh, my gosh, you nailed it. So it's finding that balance for all of us.        

00:06:39
            

We have a lot of honest conversations about our feelings, because I'm often like, I'm sorry to spend more. You know, can we tweak it? And they just have to. And then, like, I'm also a big believer that, like, perfection is the enemy of a lot of things, and so at some point, we just got to try it. So when is it my fear that's holding us back versus, like, we're not quite there yet?        

00:07:06
            

So that's probably the thing I would say the most, is, like, I know y'all are gifted to run wild and be strong horses, and we keep holding you back, and yet it's in the tension that really, I think, the best work gets done. That is so encouraging to hear. And also one that pretty sure every single marketing team is going to say, wow, I need to have that conversation with my president. Right? So thanks for sharing that.        

00:07:31
            

I appreciate that. Yeah. Well, hey there. Holy donuts. Listeners, ever feel like your nonprofits donor experience is like a jelly filled donut with no jelly?        

00:07:39
            

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00:07:45
            

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00:08:15
            

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00:08:38
            

For you all. African leadership what's been something that has worked well for you all? What's a campaign strategy? Could be even just like a philosophy or a set of values that you think, hey, this has really been something that's helpful for us. What's worked well for you?        

00:08:53
            

Man, I wish I had an answer for you on that. I feel, again, probably I learn more from the things that aren't working well for us that a lot of, I mean, we've talked about it before, but like, a lot of the kits I can buy, a lot of the kind of just marketing in a box or social media in a box, like, it doesn't work for us because there is such a secret sauce to the way our donors want to engage with us, to the way we want our donors to belong. It is, it's a hard space for me to, you know, we've gone through so many different marketing ideas and ideas where, like, you need the hero and you need the guide and all this, like, language around who's on. How do you put all the people in the right seat? And I think the thing that I've always struggled with on the marketing side is if I shove all of the work that we do through a gospel lens, then the hero is always Jesus.        

00:10:03
            

Jesus.        

00:10:07
            

And you need me at the table, and you need an African at the table, and you need a marketing person at the table. And all of us collectively are the workmanship and are the artwork that the Lord is crafting in Africa or in Haiti or in Philly, but it's not one or the other. And so I think it's really challenging for me when I get given advice or feedback of, like, make the donor the hero or make the beneficiary the hero. Like, there's always, like, this hierarchy, and I can't reconcile that with what I believe. And so one of the things we've continued to fight and push into with the way we market and the way we communicate is we're all on this team, and God's called us to do something, and we think you would.        

00:11:01
            

We could benefit from having you here, but you're not the star. Like, we need to work together. And, yeah, it's just. It's always. It's as murky as it.        

00:11:13
            

It's just murky. But I don't know that we've landed anywhere. Well, other than to feel like we. We're confident of who we want to. To be and how we want to be communicating to a database, how we want people to interact, that you have value you can do and are literally made to do something bigger than yourself.        

00:11:33
            

And so join a team. Join any team. I don't really care, but, like, get in the game. Join a team. Experience what the Lord has when we participate with him in something really big.        

00:11:47
            

And aren't the stars? Yeah. No, I love that because it's like. Every organization is different, and every single ministry is gonna. They kind of have to walk through that murkiness in their own way to say, okay, what.        

00:11:59
            

What's God called us to do? And, like, how are we gonna reach people? And that gospel lens, I think, is for you all. Like, I love that. Like, absolutely love that.        

00:12:08
            

And it's, hey, we know who we are. We know how we want to go about this, and we're, you know, we want to make Jesus the hero and everything. And so it's all about figuring out what works for your ministry and not, here's a prescription that should work for us. And it's like, well, but does it, like, just say someone wrote a book one time and said, it works for everyone? Doesn't mean it actually works for everyone.        

00:12:26
            

So I appreciate the honesty. I think the one thing, our marketing team has a matrix that we kind of work through, and there's always, like, you know, when you write a marketing, when you write a campaign, you are telling one microcosm of a story, whether you're talking about the person at Vanderbilt, that successful, or St. Jude hero, or. And. And so you have your microcosm story that you're using as kind of your litmus or your test case.        

00:12:54
            

Like, this is what we do. Meet Tito. So you all have that, and then there's this organizational level of, like, this is what we do, and there's the donor. And so one of the things we found that works really well for us is there is usually a shared feeling or emotion. Right?        

00:13:11
            

Like, people can't understand if I tell you people can't put themselves in the seat of somebody who was wrongfully imprisoned. Most people in the United States can. But I can talk to you about the place of feeling lost, feeling forgotten, feeling alone, and the beauty of when somebody walks alongside you in that or comes into that and how jesus redeems what we think is a really terrible story. Or, like, left turn in my story that I didn't really want, because an american can resonate with that half a world away. And so that's probably the one kind of trick that we found of, like, right at that crux in the story, when we could either start telling you, like, well, we helped them do this, and we helped them do this, and then we gave them a shirt and a t shirt and a tent and a tarp.        

00:14:01
            

Like, that's what every marketing pitch does. And then that's where people quit reading. Right. In a nonprofit pitch, they're like, oh, now you're telling me about you. Yeah.        

00:14:09
            

And instead, if we figure out how to reframe that of, like, this is what he needed or she needed, and this is how you helped us accomplish that for them. And. And that. And that feeling is also experienced by the donor. Yeah.        

00:14:27
            

Yeah. It's kind of this one secret sauce. I don't know about it. That's great. Answers any of your questions, but it is.        

00:14:33
            

It's great. It changes the story. Yeah. And it brings them into, you know, whatever that lens is that you all have as a ministry. Right.        

00:14:41
            

Whatever that may be. Everyone's gonna have something different. It's, how do you connect the donor to the person that actually needs them to give. Right. The more you can connect them and make them feel like this is a real human connection, the more you're gonna have success with them wanting to be part of your mission, so.        

00:15:00
            

And it doesn't make them the star of the show. Right? Like, so it's your point. It doesn't. You're not making the donor star the show.        

00:15:05
            

You're just making them feel it. The organization is at the start, either. Like, right. How many times have I stood up in front of an audience at an event and somebody's been like, we need you to tell them what we do. How boring is that?        

00:15:16
            

Like, we offer spiritual and emotional and mental health. Like, yeah, I can tell you all that, and it's true. But, like, you're not listening for the dessert, right? Like, you're waiting for the pitch. Yeah, but if I can.        

00:15:30
            

If I can reframe that around, like, what we do is we help him feel alone. Yeah, absolutely. That connects, right? So you're in ministry world. I'm guessing you're reading a decent amount as a leader.        

00:15:44
            

Listen to what's happened in the world. Taking in resources. What's something that you love to share with your team or with others who are in the space? Is there a resource? Oh, my gosh.        

00:15:54
            

One. You said a resource. Pick a few. A few resources. Read.        

00:16:01
            

I am notorious for a board member of mine never reads a book. Like, from page one to the end. Yeah. And that was a trait I picked up from him a while ago. So I read a lot of pieces of things all the time.        

00:16:16
            

I think the thing that I would say more than anything else is I read way outside my genre. So I read books about hospitality or books about medicine or, you know, like, I go way outside the scope. I pay attention to, I'm a, like, our house full of boys and we love sports. I pay attention to, like, those stories that they're telling you in the midst of, like, master masters, we can assist. Yeah.        

00:16:43
            

In the midst of that, the story they're telling you. And I'm just like, I'm seeping in how you make this guy that, you know, accidentally will win however many millions of dollars this afternoon. Like, you just made him feel like he's my friend. Like, I'm just, I don't care where it comes from. I just, I'm in my garden all the time.        

00:17:05
            

I'm reading gardening books. I'm not a big podcaster because I'm a visual, so. Yeah.        

00:17:12
            

But I also have kids yelling in the background all the time, so I'm just at that age where I'm like, I need to maybe hear if this is blood curdling. Yeah. Yeah. So I tend not to have things in my ears usually. Um, yeah, I read everything I love.        

00:17:26
            

The thing I'm currently hooked on is Harvard business reviews, top ten everything. So I'm reading their book on change management because we're changing a ton at Al, and I want to do that. Well, yeah, if people have done it, like, I want to read about it, I'd rather not flop around and get it wrong. If I can get it right, it's. Usually a good way to go for it.        

00:17:49
            

Forward is not have to flop around if you don't have to. I flop around in so many parts of life, like parenthood and budgeting and, like, why flop around if I don't have to? Like, somebody teach me what you've learned. That's pretty good advice. That's gonna be the title of the episode.        

00:18:03
            

Don't flop around if you don't flop. If you don't have only the ocean you should use. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. If people want to connect with you, if they want to get to know more about african leadership, get connected with your ministry, how would they find you?        

00:18:16
            

Africanleadershipinc.org is our website and from there you can find me and email me directly. I think I'm tethered in our LinkedIn world and our Facebook or Instagram world to all those places as well. Awesome. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for taking the time to spend a few minutes with me.        

00:18:36
            

Tell me a little bit more about african leadership, how you guys are doing and share really just your heart of like, hey, here's what makes us different and here's how we can help serve others. So I really appreciate Emily. Yeah, thanks for your time.        

00:18:53
            

Our.        

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