Page 37 - Appreciative Leadership

10 Appreciative Leadership

parlor into a beauty school that has graduated over 150 skilled
beauticians.
Besides learning technical beautician skills, the students
learn how to organize and run a small business, how to work
as a team, and how to use their own transformations to give
back to the community. Classes are, to a large degree, planned
and organized by the former street kids. Boys and girls learn
together to break stereotypes and gender roles. Rap sessions are
held once a week, giving students and alumni an opportunity
to celebrate learning and help each other overcome challenges
like abuse at home or temptations to make more money on the
streets. Most rap sessions also include some form of a talent
show to highlight students’ unique strengths and creativity.
Costs associated with the education program are heavily
subsidized by local and international grants, but the longer-
term plan is that the network of beauty parlors will some day
be able to fund the education/transformation of other stu-
dents and provide graduates with a strong employment path.

After visiting the school recently, an international aid worker

commented, “It was incredible to see the self-confidence of a
15-year-old girl running a meeting of 50 students. She facili-
tated in such a way that the boy running the meeting next week

would know where she left off and where he would begin. I
thought to myself, ‘Wow, if we could all work that way, what a
world we would have.”’
In addition to starting the NIA Foundation to help
Ethiopia’s street kids, Zemi has also built on her experience to
start Ethiopia’s only center for autistic children.

With the support of Appreciative Leadership, many people out-
grow the limits of their realities and move into a larger more appre-

ciative world—like lotus flowers growing from the mud. Professor
David Cooperrider has suggested that this happens through inquiry.