Africa-Press – Botswana. The first phase of the national mindset change campaign project launched by President Dr Mokgweetsi Masisi last year in Zutshwa is coming to completion July 20, after achieving mammoth milestones toward building a firm national value systems.
Briefing BOPA on the deliverables attained on Thursday, the project coordinator, Ms Maipelo Sealetsa said their team was assembled June 2023, and had to hit the ground running to meet the three-year project targets.
Ms Sealetsa said the first phase, which predominantly focused on creating awareness of the ‘change’ alluded to, resumed with the team identifying key stakeholders to partner with toward successful dissemination of the information.
“We engaged the media, both private and public including the leadership from all sectors such as Bogosi, NGOs, faith-based organisations,” she said.
In addition, Ms Sealetsa said they prioritised building capacity amongst selected groups as they understood that this was a national change, not a government reform.
To extend capacity building around the campaign, Ms Sealetsa said they introduced the national mindset coaches at district level, with the first batch emanating from Palapye November last year.
She said districts were made up of smaller constituencies and for each one they allotted four coaches to build awareness, from the capacitation and mentorship provided by the campaign team, to best articulate the ambition to a fellow Motswana.
Ms Sealetsa said they had simplified the concept using even practical examples that spoke well to an ordinary citizen.
Based on the latter, she reiterated that they had increased the number of coaches by taking onboard Performance Improvement Coordinators (PICs) across all ministries to rollout the campaign across departments.
According to Ms Sealetsa these were key because in advancing the economy, more priority lied in optimum implementation of policies and reforms within the ministries.
“The PICs are going to help us bring this message and assimilate it within what they do on a daily basis.
The same applied for their external stakeholders who essentially have to get a grip of what the campaign is about,” she said.
Ms Sealetsa said because the project was centered around boosting performance and productivity in the workplace, all coaches would have the project deliverables being embedded as part of their Key Performance Indicators.
Essentially, she referred to government coaches training, regretting that for private ones it would be difficult to monitor performance.
She said part of the training took into account the monitoring and evaluation aspect to measure the impact attained on a monthly basis, mentioning that the 20th of every month they reported to President Masisi on implementation and progression of the campaign.
Ms Sealetsa said the coaches trained had successfully managed to submit comprehensive reports of implementation at respective constituencies every month.
She reiterated that the first phase wholly focused on having intense conversations across various communities as a way of gathering information that set a clear path of what values should be embraced within the nation going forward.
She added that history has proven that from way back Batswana had been accustomed to achieving a lot for themselves toward earning a decent living and that was met through implementing the good values of oneness.
From these discussions, Ms Sealetsa said there would be selection of values that would shape the new Botswana that desired to have a high income status by the year 2036.
Upon completion of this activity, Ms Sealetsa said the second phase would resume from July 20 and would proceed for two years.
She said its deliverables would mostly be centered around education using diverse approaches and cascading the values using different methods.
Ms Sealetsa said for this campaign their budget was only P10m, but gladly the private sector had pledged donations in kind toward the noble course.
She expressed gratitude toward private sector participation and underscored that this was testament of the spirit of oneness that the campaign preached.
She thanked all radio stations which effortlessly interrupted their daily schedule to accommodate the campaign.
Ms Sealetsa mentioned unprecedented help from psychologists who offered to counsel multitudes for free; technicians who set up sound systems for people to receive the campaigns messages live.
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