The Halidon Committee (2012) 

During my time at Seepapitso Senior Secondary School, one of my best friends was battling renal failure. There was an ongoing fundraising campaign to raise funds for his kidney transplant. At the beginning of 2012, my friend CK approached me with the idea that we as BM's friends should also be involved in raising funds for his transplant. I was on board! Since I was the President of the Student Council, I asked CK to head our small fundraising committee. The other members of the committee were my friend and also my Student Council Deputy President BM, my Student Council Vice President MK, my friend and also BM's girlfriend at the time SM, CK's friend MG, and my friend TK. The name was my idea and was inspired by Robert Ludlum's The Cry of The Halidon. The idea of a mysterious committee was appealing to the nerd in me. We worked closely with the Guidance and Counseling office at the school. We remain eternally grateful to Mrs Kutoro for her guidance and mentorship in all our undertakings. 

We planned and executed two major fundraising events. The first was a beauty pageant, Miss Seepapitso 2012. It was a reasonable event for students to organize and it was more than a success. Even CK, who had a huge crush on me at the time, was pleased that we had co-hosted the event. Inspired by the success of this event, and with the support of the late SD, we dared to dream bigger. We organized a family fun day at one of the finest venues in Kanye, Motse Lodge. We approached influential individuals from Kanye and the nation for both donations and time to grace our event. We met with the Paramount Chief of the Bangwaketse Tribe, His Royal Highness Kgosi Malope II (pictured above). We also met with former President of Botswana, and a Kanye native, the late His Excellency Sir Ketumile Q. J. Masire. He generously pledged a donation and graced our event as the Guest of Honor. Of course some of our other attempts were less successful, including attempts to meet with the then President His Excellency Lieutenant General Dr Sir Seretse Khama Ian Khama and the richest person in Botswana Satar Dada. The event would have been a success except for unaccounted tickets valued at over P10,000 (about $1,000). The Halidon was nearly suspended from school for this mishap. Perhaps because the event was otherwise a success, or maybe because the beneficiary BM was a part of the committee, we were granted immunity against any disciplinary hearing. 

CK as the Chairperson was more of the Chief Executive of this non-profit venture and I as the Deputy Chairperson was more of its Chief Operating Officer. Watching all of us work together to bring this dream to life taught me a lot about team work and collective action. Of course it was not a walk in the park. There were different personalities that often clashed, but this helped me develop my diplomacy and conflict transformation skills. Unlike my RaMCash venture, working on a team also allowed me to see how quickly complex tasks were accomplished where there was a clear division of labor and task specialization. Most of the time all I had to do was delegate, support my team, and check-in along the way to see that we were making progress on our goals. It especially helped that I had a great team, that worked well together. A lesson from this is one must be intentional about building the organizational culture centered on trust, accountability, and community. The incident with the missing money (or unaccounted tickets) was my personal failure as the leader of the logistics of the operation. A key lesson I took away from this is to install control mechanisms to minimize such incidents. Now with the benefit of an education, I know that startups require strong controls as they are susceptible to fraud and misuse of funds. The presence of BM on the team was inspiring in itself, but it also reinforced the need to involve those your serve throughout the process of designing solutions to meet their needs.