The power of empowerment

It's Hari Keusahawanan again. Every class has to sell something to raise money for the school. The usual business is to sell food and drinks. Some classes offer games. There is even a mystery house. Out of the blue I thought of a new business to venture - cyber cafe and cinema. Utilizing the two computer labs that the school have, I'm all equipped for the new business.

I divided my 13 boys into two groups. The cyber cafe group was led by Shakir and the cinema group was led by Hafiz. I just gave each group the general instructions and they have to work out the details themselves. The cyber cafe group find their own games to install, reset the LAN connections so that our customers can play games with each other and set the time table for whose on duty. The cinema group find the movies themselves. They borrowed a home theater system and a lap top. Time table for person on duty was also set.

As for the my girls, I gave them the conventional business of selling food and drinks. Forming a working committee, I just gave them the general ideas of how they should go about it. They have to figure out how to organize themselves.

Sometimes my students asked me administrative questions. I always asked them to refer to their group leaders. I'm just an advisor, they have to organize their activities themselves.

Total empowerment that I gave them has positive results. They learned to organize themselves, how to share works, and most importantly how to communicate effectively with each other. So far I can only see enjoyment and no conflict. They were willing to put up long hours in the evening just to install games, set up the cinema, and go shopping for things needed by our stall. They seen to enjoy themselves tremendously.

Even though Hari Keusahawanan will only commence this saturday, we opened our cyber cafe and cinema since wednesday after school hours, giving us a three days head start. The response on Wednesday was ok but we discussed on ways to improve our service. Today (Thursday) we have more customers. Our income on this second day is approximately double than on Wednesday. Praise be to Allah. We expect to get more customers tomorrow and the peak will be on saturday itself.

This experience has shown me the power of empowerment. When people are given the trust and freedom to do what they like, their creativity will flourish. Profit is not my major target. I just want my students to learn to organize themselves, work together, and enjoy the experiences. Hopefully this will be an event that they will remember for a long, long time.

May Allah bless us all.