For Caroline, men important to moulding female leaders

Dar es Salaam. Wearing her short sleeve  polka dot dress,  Caroline Israel, smiling broadly, shared some chocolates, asking me to choose one.
I chose a brown chocolate  and left a black and brown one for her. That was a warm welcome by this development practitioner with over seven year-experience in managing research projects as well as facilitating a policy analysis on sustainable development and leadership at the Uongozi Institute, a government think-tank in leadership capacity building for sustainable development in Africa.
Her career success and leadership journey to where she is today is dedicated to her father, who built her confidence from a young age and instilled a lot of trust in her to a point she knew she had everything it takes  to be who she wanted to be.
According to her, in the struggle for bringing more women in leadership  being confident about themselves is very important.
And anyone cannot be confident enough to face challenges if they never had an opportunity to be raised by parents or guardians who believe in them.
Caroline says she grew up in an  extremely supportive family and her father was her number one champion. In a family of four girls and one boy, their father loved them all. And that love resulted in confidence building among themselves.
“My father told me there is nothing you cannot do. You are extremely intelligent. He used to encourage us to refrain from certain behaviours and that has worked in  my favour as I’m very confident in whatever I do,” says Caroline.
She adds that it is important to have a male figure as fathers are the foundation of raising future successful women. According to a qualitative political study they did, about 14 women of different ages and titles in politics said their fathers played a critical roles in ensuring that they had enough time to study even after class hours.
God created men and women, and men are part and parcel of women’s lives. We need each other. If you find a progressive man looks around the women who surround him, you will notice how empowered they are.
“I understand our societies have different circumstances and those who are not raised without a male figure, it is important to look for a good male figure and connect, then  you will be amazed by the progress they will make,’’ says Caroline.
She says to unlock those obstacles that stop  women from becoming leaders, women need to be self-conscious and drop all negativities that hold them back. This will give a woman a dedicated commitment for them to grow. Deliberate effort is important.
Ms Caroline, who holds a Master’s decree in Economics from the University of Dar es Salaam and a Postgraduate Diploma in Leadership from the Aalto University in Finland, says her career journey started as a  Monitoring and Evaluation Intern on Public Health issues at Engender Health.
She applied when she was pursuing her Master’s degree and luckily she got it. She had her list of the organizations she wanted to work for. The organisations are REPOA, the National Social Security Fund (NSSF) and the Bank of Tanzania. Just on her third month of her internship she saw an opportunity at REPOA with the Research Assistant position. She applied for the job and got it.
She was attached to the Social Protection department and she specialised in gender issues, education, health issues and other things along those lines. After three years, she felt like changing her job because she wanted to do more than just research.
“I wanted to expand my horizon to more activities. It was in 2013 when I saw a job advert. I googled Uongozi Institute and I was very fascinated with the word leadership. I was very impressed with the service they deliver and the quality of their work. Since I saw there was also a research wing I felt like not losing anything when applying for the job,’’ adds Caroline.
This is her eighth year at Uongozi overseeing  a programme on leadership with a specific focus on women and leadership. She aspires to see women as agents of change and development in their areas of influence.
As soon as she entered Uongozi, she realised that women’s issues were somehow not part and parcel of the system. She knows this was not intentional. She recalls her boss asking her soon as she joined what she would bring on the table.Not seeing much of women participation in the programmes was her answer.
It was through for her that annual events on women issues were established. And recommendations from the participants for three years on women annual events needed more of enabling events on women.
In 2016 they developed a programme on women leadership, covering different aspects.
The programme will be training women and produce a documentation for the woman herself and the young generation and the community in general. There is also an aspect of coaching and mentoring. The project kick-off plans are in the pipelines and soon women will benefit from it.
The programme will train directors, heads of departments and senior officers on having skills with the aim of increasing the number of women waiting for the opportunities to rise.
It will be a long-term training by batches. After each quarter they will be having a new batch. This will include women with different work experiences for them to be able to exchange experiences.
Commenting on the positive changes that came with her efforts, she says it is work in progress but just the idea being accepted and implemented is an achievement for her and the women training programme will bring about a big pool of skilled women in leadership.
“I see a bright future and since President Samia Suluhu Hassan made it clear that she is looking for skilled women we are happy to be part of preparing them for grabbing opportunities .
We make sure a position is just a stepping stone, but we make sure these women are able to deliver and they are effective,” says Caroline.
She says she is happy that through training, research and dialogues women are able to challenge each other, and the annual events have helped them to build the sense of self identification by asking what are the areas of improvements and what are their strengths. This helps women to identify their leadership style and understand their team on their potentials for them to shine.
She says the participatory style of leadership is also important as you give power to your team members, customers and give them an opportunity to share their thoughts and comments as this helps to get different feedbacks and be able to achieve your leadership goals.