The first week of the workshop focuses on life skills instructions. This week is instrumental in helping students define their purpose, craft a vision for themselves and create a strategy to find their potential. These things are skills that Rubin and Mwakapango believe should be taught in schools around the world, but they’re not.

“These are the things that we think if students and young people could learn these from an early age, not only would it really make them better people, but it could kind of holistically develop them into better leaders,” Rubin says.

“We have been having people all over the world like friends that say, ‘Hey you guys, this is not just a problem here in Tanzania because what you are telling me now, if I was told when I was in high school or in primary, I could make a better choice of what I want to study in the college,’” Mwakapango agrees.

The second week of the program is focused on leadership and giving the students the opportunity to put their ideas into action. This is the time for students to choose a challenge facing their community and develop a community service project to assist with changing it. The kids develop, create and implement the project all on their own. Mwakapango, Rubin and other team members are merely facilitators and mentors.

Every parent and teacher has a vision of what they want their children or students to be when they grow up. Whether that is a creative, hardworking, patient, etc., what part of daily lessons in the classroom or outside of it are teaching students how to develop themselves into that person their parent or teacher has envisioned them to be?

“There is more than geography; there is more than mathematics,” Mwakapango says. “You have to figure out who you really want to be in your life, and when you’re in college or in your school, you’re using that time to sharpen, to build the kind of person that you want to become and the impact that you want to make to the world.”