End of Year Holiday Letter – Alice Mwangeka’s Story
December 2025
Greetings and Happy Holidays from The Center for Social Leadership! If you have been supporting us in the past, thank you for your generosity over the years; it has allowed us to continue offering our programs to nonprofit leaders, school leaders and single mothers in Africa and Latin America.
CSL’s September School Leaders Program (SLP; see program description and testimonials from a previous program) was a huge success with 140 rural primary and secondary school leaders in Kenya’s Taita-Taveta District (one of Kenya’s most impoverished regions, about four hours inland from Mombasa) participating in a three-day training provided by three Ph.D. professors of leadership, organizational behavior and entrepreneurship (including myself) and a Nairobi businessman and school board member who provided trainings on mobilizing alumni to raise funds for schools. All four trainers volunteered
their time.
Please take a moment to read the real true-life story of how the SLP touched the life of one woman.
Alice Mwangeka grew up in a very poor region of Kenya’s Coast province and had to walk for over five miles to school each day in order to receive her education. “Back then, I had no other choice. I needed an education to survive,” Alice shares. “My friends and I did not have another option. Now I wake up each morning wanting to give many options to my students.”
Alice is now the director of Mwakingali Junior School near Voi, about one hour from Wundanyi where the SLP was held from September 22 – 24. She is responsible for over one thousand students.
“Because of the School Leaders Program,” Alice shares, “I have gained many skills in dealing with people from different status, capacity and class which include staff members, parents, students and the entire community and the importance of balancing work and family.”
Many of the school leaders were surprised that work-life balance was included in the program. “This is not something we have received much training in,” shares William Mwadiga, the headmaster of nearby Canon Kituri Secondary School. “We are expected to work all the time, but as a result we lose our motivation and energy. This more balanced approach is more sustainable, for ourselves and our schools. Also, I had never learned about loneliness and how it can be managed as a leader, and it is a big problem in our schools.”
Thanks to sessions taught by Nairobi real estate businessman and CSL board member Francis Kihanya, Alice learned how to integrate school alumni into a local fundraising program for the school. “[The SLP] has given me valuable skills in resource mobilization, where I mobilize alumni of the school I am managing who give us funds to run most of our school projects and also assist the vulnerable learners to attain good quality education.”
Alice shares an example of one of her local fundraising initiatives. “We have managed to get funds that we have used to construct rental houses from which we get funds from monthly rental income that is used to run our school projects. We have also set up a small farm where we grow vegetables which in place assist in school dieting.”
In fact, Alice has come to every School Leaders Program CSL has offered—three over the past three years. “Having attended all the conferences that have so far been organized by CSL,” she shares, “I have become well equipped with rich skills and knowledge which in place I am giving back to the community by educating others in every opportunity that I get.”
The Center for Social Leadership does very little fundraising. Our President (me) is 100 percent volunteer. (I am also a university professor.) We have a few team members who consult on our various programs and a lot of volunteers. (In addition to the SLP, each year we offer our Women’s Empowerment Program to 150 single mothers in Kenya and our Executive Nonprofit Sustainable Leadership Program to 150-200 nonprofit leaders in Mexico, which we offered in Queretaro from September 4–6 with 19 volunteer trainers from Mexico and the US, including five Ph.D. professors from US universities.)
CSL needs donations to cover our expenses—mostly food for conference participants and flights/travel expenses for our volunteer trainers—so we can continue to offer our programs and enable Alice and other school leaders and nonprofit leaders to access high-quality leadership development and single mothers can access life skills and parenting trainings.
Please consider making a year-end contribution by going to www.socialleaders.org and clicking on ‘Donate’ at the top right. We appreciate your considering our 501c3, tax-deductible nonprofit organization as a people-to-people, volunteer initiative that, with recent budget cuts to Africa and Latin America, has never been more necessary.
Thank you and wishing you and your family a wonderful holiday season and a New Year with much love, peace and adventure.
Warm regards,
Anthony Silard, Ph.D. President The Center for Social Leadership
P.S. The Center for Social Leadership only sends out two fundraising letters per year. This is one of them. Would you be willing to consider forwarding it to some of your friends and telling them why you support CSL’s programs?
