Gosaye Gizaw has a big job: as the Education Office Head for Ethiopia’s Bale Zone, he is responsible for the education of 350,000 children.
He was one of 350 influential figures we invited to our leadership training in May, together with Lightyear Leadership. Through leadership training, we taught these people how to develop a personal legacy and to map this out through visions and goals.
Gosaye came to the Lightyear Leadership training, expecting to sit through three days of PowerPoint presentations on topics like planning and budgets. What he experienced was something completely different.
Gosaye Gizaw
“I didn’t expect this type of training. It was amazing. You are trained through practical and theoretical. You share ideas with different groups. You learn new ways of thinking.
“I learned that integrity is the basis for all things. What we are doing in our workplace is not always in integrity. We learned in this training how to create integrity in our organization. I learned how to create integrity within myself.
“I also learned about legacy. I thought it was only those in the higher positions who have a legacy. Now I know that all individuals have a legacy. I myself will have a legacy.”
Gosaye is determined to make that legacy count. He set strong goals in his life, including to construct his own home by 2020, and support his wife in obtaining a degree by 2021.
His legacy extends to the children of the Bale Zone, with two goals he has committed to achieving by 2020:
- reducing the primary school drop out rate from 6% to 1.5%
- increasing the high school pass rates from 30% to 80%.
After three days of intensive development, we left Gosaye and 350 other influential figures committed to creating a legacy for themselves, their country, and the world. The training is over, but the impact has only just begun.