Empowering Nakuwadde: AIA's Professional Panel Inspires Dreams

Our greatest mission has always been and continues to be empowering the people of Nakuwadde. Our programs are tailored to be a reflection of the community and the people in that community.

This year, we started an end-of-holiday program that we call the AIA professional panel. The one-day event invites role models and community icons that have backgrounds similar to those of the people living in Nakuwadde.

As we ended the second term school holiday program on Friday 26th August, we hosted the second Professional Panel event at our center where we invited former AIA salsa dance trainer and current professional Dancer Valentino Richard Kabenge (Val), Dr. Elizabeth from Alive Medical services, Ivan Bossa a Coffee Entrepreneur, and TV personalist Ibrahim Kawuki commonly known as Teacher Teacher.

The message by all our panelists was general and precise, the importance of staying in school. Val recalled the circumstances that led to him dropping out of school and the hardship he faced thereafter; Dr. Liz added to that by telling the story of how she had to teach herself mathematics in order to get to medical school because, despite the fact that math was a requirement to get into medical school, her school didn’t teach it.

The incredibly engaged audience asked many questions, but one sentiment was overwhelmingly shared, how do you deal with rejection in your career? Both Teacher and Val had one answer, ”Create your own opportunities and don’t let anyone tell you that you cannot achieve your dreams because you most certainly can.”

Of course, the event was not short of the AIA fun, Ivan Bossa shared some of the coffee that he exports to Europe, and Val ended his session with an impromptu dance choreography that had all of us on our feet in the AIA yard counting one-two-three to Azawi’s hit song Slow dancing.

We hope to continue hosting these professional panels in order to motivate our community and bring their role models closer to them, and what is more, as we encourage students to stay in school, we also show them how the challenges they are facing now were overcome by people that were once in the same or similar circumstances.