‘Leadership we want’

‘Leadership we want’

22-November-2017
Minister Adam delivering his keynote addressAspiring leaders revisited leadership questions around six thematic areas in a conference entitled ‘Leadership we want’.
The conference, organised by the Seychelles Mandela Washington Fellows Alumni in collaboration with the US embassy, was held at the Eden Bleu Hotel on Friday.
The discussions centred on the view of leadership now and what the youth want leadership to be in the future especially in sectors relating to education, environment, security and others.
Welcoming remarks were read by the US consular agent Nick Watson, followed by an introduction on the conference by a 2017 Mandela Washington Fellow, Malshini Senaratne and a video address by the chief of mission of the US embassy to Mauritius and Seychelles Dr Melanie Zimmerman.
Then two keynote addresses were made by the Minister for Health Jean-Paul Adam and environment activist Alvania Lawen in the presence of young and aspiring leaders from all walks in the Seychelles, from students to young professionals.
A number of speakers shared their leadership experiences, their challenges encountered and their vision for the future, around themes such as global warming, social affairs, human rights, health and family, industry, business and entrepreneurship, community engagement and civic leadership.
A hackathon competition was also held during the workshop to allow the participants to engage, exchange ideas, share experiences and propose solutions to bring about the leadership they want to see.
Minister Adam said such an initiative is close to his heart as it involves empowering the youth and making sure the young people understand not only the opportunity they have but the responsibility they have to step forward and take leadership roles.

“When we look at leadership in the modern context, let’s look at it in terms of somebody defending certain values that they believe in passionately and they are taking it forward in a way which allows change to take place in their situation,” he said.
He noted one of the challenges in leadership in Seychelles is the tendency to see leadership through the lens of politics.
“Transformational leadership must come from outside of politics as it must be a collection of many individual actions that come together to allow meaningful and transformational change to happen,” he said.
He said to push forward change we need individual leaders to be constantly aware of the environment in which that change will be happening.
“Do we need to redesign governance for realities of new leadership or do we need to redesign leadership for the realities of governance? I think that fundamentally in the modern environment, in Seychelles and globally, do we need to rethink the whole way which we govern our societies and therefore we need to rethink the way we think of leadership? The answers are YES, we have to think both of those,” he said.
Miss Lawen, who is an S5 student from Anse Boileau, a member of the UN Youth, an environmentalist student award recipient and an advocate for environmental protection, said nothing comes smoothly in life.
“Dear leaders, never make age, fear, height and anything a barrier. You are leaders, you are the people who do not tell someone to construct your monument, you are the people who bring the hammers and build the monument alongside other people,” she said.
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