About This Episode
In a world that is constantly changing, our generosity must also evolve. If we want to have a positive, long-lasting impact on local communities, we must rethink the ways we’ve traditionally addressed their needs. Tune into the latest episode on the Responsive Nonprofit Podcast as Dr. Bertrhude Albert shares a vision for generosity reimagined!
Dr. Bertrhude Albert will challenge you to dig deep and reimagine the ways we give and engage with those in need. She will share her personal story of how she found herself hurting those she intended to help in Haiti and how she uses that vivid experience to bring radical transformation to her homeland.
Dr. Albert firmly believes that generosity has the power to change the world—if we allow it to change us first.
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Conversation Transcript
01:33
In our world that is constantly changing, we must also evolve how we think about generosity. And we also have to rethink the way that we’ve traditionally addressed the important problems facing our communities, as well as how we engage our donors in their philanthropic efforts to fuel the good that we’re trying to bring to the world. I am so excited that we have Dr. Bertrude Albert, the CEO and co-founder of P4H Global.
02:03
P4H Global has grown the largest teacher training nonprofit in Haiti. Her team of 45 full-time trained experts have trained 9,000 teachers across all of Haiti’s departments. And in 2022, they were awarded the international UNESCO Hamden Prize for Excellence in Teacher Development. This is the largest prize awarded by UNESCO. And it was the first time a Haitian organization has won.
02:32
I am so pleased and thrilled to welcome Dr. B, Bertrude Albert to the stage here at the Responsive Nonprofit Summit. Thank you so much. Good morning, everyone. I am so thrilled to be here with you in this moment. Really, there aren’t enough words to adequately describe how I’m feeling. I get to be here sharing the space with you.
02:59
profit leaders, people that are dreaming and doing, changing the world, people that are committed to making this world a better place. I’m telling you all, there is nowhere else I’d rather be than right here with you. So I was born in Haiti, I’m from Haiti, and my native language is Haitian Creole. And so I would say to you in Haitian Creole, merci pour présence. Thank you for your presence.
03:26
You are investing the most valuable resource that you have, the most precious resource, which is your time. And for that, I’m thankful. We all here at the summit, we are thankful and we are committed to giving you something of value. And that’s why we have developed and created this virtual experience specifically for you, wherever you may be. This experience is for you. And at the end of the day, I hope.
03:55
that at the end of my keynote speech, you are able to unleash a radical generosity. You’re able to rethink generosity in a way that transforms not only the receiver but also the giver and the organizer and the observer. We want a generosity that’s so radical, that it transforms everybody involved. It transforms our entire world. I am thrilled.
04:23
to be here and to be speaking with you all. You know, one of the reasons why this is special, what we’re doing here with this summit, is because not everybody in the world believes that change is possible. Some people think that we’re crazy, and that’s fine, because even Steve Jobs, I’m gonna paraphrase what he said, he said, sometimes you need a little bit of crazy to change the world, okay? And again, that’s paraphrasing, he didn’t say it exactly that way, but we know that
04:53
people, not everybody thinks the way that we think. And that’s okay. And that’s what makes this moment that much more special. The fact that we get to bring together like-minded people, we get to be encouraged, and inspired, and we get to push the limits forward together. This moment is so special because we get to be equipped to do what we were made to do, which is change lives, and make this world a better place.
05:22
Today, I am going to be sharing with you my story. I am the co-founder and CEO of P4H Global. And as you heard, P4H Global has grown to be the largest teacher training nonprofit in Haiti. Our team is working within Haiti’s educational system to improve the quality of education in Haiti because these kids, they deserve it.
05:44
These kids need quality education to ensure a brighter future. And although P4H now has grown and matured and is doing good things in Haiti, we didn’t start off that way. Our beginnings, it’s riddled with a lot of mistakes. And I hope that as I dig deep into some of the mistakes that we made and we look at how me and my team, we were hurting those we wanted to help, I hope that as we look at this story,
06:14
I encourage you all to rethink generosity and kind of dig deeper, see how we can improve, increase our impact, positive impact on the world around us. I learned that the world is evolving and if the world is evolving, so must our generosity evolve. If our communities are evolving, so must our generosity evolve. I learned early on that if I want to make a positive, long-lasting impact, on my homeland. I needed to rethink the traditional ways that the world has helped my people, rethink the traditional ways that the world has addressed the needs of the Haitian people. I can’t wait to share the story with you all. So let’s start and we’re going to start at the beginning.
07:13
It’s forever etched into my heart, into my mind, into my soul. Because in this very moment, a catastrophic 7.0 earthquake struck Haiti. It only lasted 35 seconds. And during that 35 seconds, the earth violently shook. And after the earth shook, our lives were forever changed. Because of that 35 seconds, over 300,000 Haitians died. Because of that 35 seconds over one million Haitians became homeless. After this moment, all of us, Haitians in Haiti and in the diaspora outside of Haiti, our lives were forever changed. I still have these vivid memories, these vivid images of the devastation of the earthquake. I mean, this struck me so personally. It devastated me. It felt like a 50-ton truck was going 100 miles an hour straight in my direction. And I think that you all know what I’m talking about. You know a tragedy. It hits our earth and then all of a sudden you freeze. Your muscles tense up, but your heart, it starts to beat fast, it starts to race and you lose your breath. You can’t seem to catch your breath. That was me in the moment when I was hearing these news reports of what’s happening in my homeland. And this, it hit home for me even more personally because
08:39
I was born in Haiti, left when I was a child, but my dad was still in Haiti during the earthquake. And for a week, we didn’t hear, we didn’t know what was going on with my dad because the lines of communication, they were down. And so I’m frantic. I’m trying to figure out what is going on. Is he okay? And, you know, even after I found out my dad was all right, he was in the north, the earthquake happened in the south.
09:06
I was thankful for this, but I couldn’t shake that feeling. It stayed deep within me. I knew that there was something so deeply wrong with my people, with the people in the country that I was born in. I knew that I had to go back. I had to take an active role in helping to heal what was broken. I knew, I think I’m preaching to the choir now because some of you all as nonprofit leaders, you feel that calling on your life. You know that you were made to be part of the healing of people’s brokenness. I knew I was being called back to Haiti. And even if I didn’t know in that moment, there were countless images, vivid images of the devastation, the destruction that happened in Haiti. I have goosebumps even thinking about it in this moment because you think about my people, we are strong, we are resilient, we are able, we’ve gone through so much. Even before this earthquake, 60% of my people in Haiti were living off of two US dollars a day. I mean, we knew struggle, we knew pain. And then you go and you bring this devastating earthquake. I don’t have words to describe how I felt. I just knew I had to help. And so I got together with my best friend, my roommate Priscilla, and we were like, what can we do? Well, I mean, what does the world typically do? Let’s collect supplies.
So Priscilla and I for the months after the earthquake, we ended up collecting over 400 pounds of clothes, food, shoes, medicine, you name it. We had it. I mean, we had like a mini convenience store. Walmart had nothing on us, y’all. I mean, if you take a look at these images, this was our apartment. It was difficult to get to our room. You had to jump over, climb over, like piles of clothes. We spent months collecting these supplies because we knew that there were people in need. As many of our classmates and our friends, they said, “Hey, Bertrand, Priscilla, if you all go to Haiti, we’ll go.” So it ended up being a group of 19 University of Florida students, go Gators, okay? University of Florida, I love the university. It ended up being 19 of us going to Haiti and spending our spring break passing out these supplies. And let me tell you all something, as we were spending that time passing these supplies to the Haitian people, I felt like a younger, blacker, broker, Oprah Winfrey. You get a shirt, you get a shirt, you get a shirt. Everybody gets a shirt. I felt good. I’m telling you. I mean, there was a part of it where it’s like, Oh man, certainly there are people that are hurting and I get to see a smile on a face. I mean, these are people that I’ve been thinking about praying for for months. I had these people on my mind and the fact that I got to share space with them. It felt so good.
12:02
But y’all. There is something about generosity. There’s something called the giver’s high. And that’s why I love this quote from Dr. Allen from UC Berkeley. Dr. Allen says humans are biologically wired for generosity. Acting generously activates the same reward pathway that is activated by sex and food giving and helping just feel good. There’s something so powerful about giving.
12:32
And research over and over and over, they support that claim. Research suggests that giving it has a positive impact on your mental and physical health. It has a positive impact on your blood pressure. It decreases anxiety and stress. It decreases depression. Research suggests it helps to enhance one sense of purpose. It helps to improve relationships. Generosity is just good. It’s good for everybody involved.
And so for me being there with the Haitian people and getting to activate generosity, I felt good, okay? And as we were passing these things out, Priscilla and I, decided: “You know what? The week is over, let’s sit down with the community leaders and let’s find out what the community leaders thought”. I thought I was hoping that maybe they would compare me to Oprah and if not Oprah, I would settle for Mother Teresa, okay? Anything positive.
I was looking for a positive reaction. And the Haitian people, my people are so kind and generous and loving. They flowered us with love. It was beautiful. But as we pushed a little bit further we said, “but let’s talk about impact, like lives changed or like what was happening.” And to our surprise, we learned that we actually hurt more than we helped. This was a harsh reality check. I was like, what do you mean we’re hurting people?
13:59
We met a man who sold clothes and food and shoes, and he was very clear with us that for the upcoming days, perhaps weeks, his business would be negatively impacted. We met another woman, Rose, who had the same exact story. I mean, who can compete with free? We were flooding the community with all of these supplies. And here’s where we went wrong. We never once asked what the community
14:29
What were the true needs and desires of the community? We just went ahead and we flooded the community with what we thought they needed. In fact, it wasn’t even just what we thought they needed. We had seen so many people before us do the same exact thing, come back to America, celebrate. Oh my goodness, we did it. We changed lives. Take a look at this little boy with the shirt. Look at that. So we’ve seen that we’ve been conditioned to think that this is generosity. We’re giving them something that they didn’t have.
14:59
But we learned that there’s so much more to this powerful word than just giving something. As we were digging deeper into this idea of generosity, we started to research and read book after book after book, article after article. We dug deep Priscilla and I, when we came back to the United States to try to understand what was the community talking about.
15:25
And as we did, take a look at just a couple of the titles of these books. Toxic Charity. When Helping Hurts. Dead Aid. More Than Good Intentions. From Dependence to Dignity. Killing with Kindness. Pfff! Our minds were blown! My goodness! The old traditional way of giving – there seemed to be much more than just giving and walking away. It was as if these researchers, these authors, they were calling out for us, crying out for us to stop and listen to local communities stop and hear the cries of local communities that say, hey, it’s not just all positive what you’re doing in order to be truly generous. We’ve got to dig deeper and truly understand the long-term, midterm, short-term impact of our interventions.
16:16
I was blown away at the research that we were receiving. And as we were digging a little bit deeper, I’m like, I still don’t fully understand. And I’m going to take a moment here to kind of pause and dig deep on one of the books, which is Toxic Charity. In Toxic Charity, Dr. Lupton, he helps us understand something really powerful. He shows us the difference between crisis and a chronic problem.
He shows us that a crisis that requires emergency intervention, a crisis like an earthquake immediately after an earthquake, a hurricane, another natural disaster, in these moments we need to rush in, help, save the day, because lives depend on it. We need to act quick. And there are immediate fixes to people’s lives being in danger. But every situation is in a crisis. We also have chronic problems.
And chronic problems, they require development. A chronic problem is a deep-rooted structural problem that can’t be solved overnight. I’m talking about hunger, economic poverty. I’m talking about these long-lasting problems. Imagine if I were to go to somebody who had chronic hunger. I’m not talking about starvation, but chronic hunger, and I gave them a plate of rice. That couldn’t ever solve the deep-rooted issue. Or imagine somebody that struggles with economic poverty: if I gave them $10, that wouldn’t solve the deep-rooted issue. There are some deep-rooted issues that need long-term development and investment.
18:10
Now here’s the problem, and here’s where we made a significant mistake, is that when you address a crisis as if it’s a crisis, you save lives. Well, when you address a chronic issue as if it’s a crisis, then you hurt those you intend to help. You create dependence for those you’re trying to help in the long term, you won’t have the impact that you intend to have. Dr. Lupton, he says, “the key to effective service is accurately matching the need with the appropriate intervention.” I would say for the context of this summit, in order for us to dig deep in generosity and have this radical generosity, we need to be giving with our heart, our hands, but also with our minds.
We need to be critically analyzing the long-term, short-term, mid-term impact of the work that we’re doing. And the reality is donors these days, they’re searching for that. They are craving change. They are believing that we are creating change. And let me tell you something, I’ll take it a step further. It’s not just about the community telling us, hey, Bertrand Priscilla, you got it wrong. Even if the community didn’t tell us this.
19:09
It would still be our responsibility to do research, to evaluate the impact of our work, to understand what type of impact we are having. We owe it to the community, we owe it to our donors, those who are giving us their hard-earned money, those who are giving us their trust, their belief in us, and those who are standing fiercely behind us. Oh, we owe it to them. They crave it and we certainly owe it to them, but we also owe it to ourselves.
19:38
And I know that you all know this as nonprofit leaders, this isn’t a nine to five. It certainly is not a nine-to-five. We are giving our entire lives to accomplishing our mission. We are spending days, weeks, months, years, thinking about things, giving our hearts, traveling, and doing these powerful things. And if we are doing these things, we ought to see if we are truly having a positive impact. We owe it to ourselves.
20:05
The fact that we’re committing our entire lives. The reality is so much is at stake with our intervention in our generosity, so much is at stake. And so as we get back to our story, I love this definition of generosity. And it really shows, it really captures the mindset that Priscilla and I went through. Generosity, as defined by the University of Notre Dame’s Science of Generosity Project, is the virtue of giving good things to others freely and abundantly. I love this definition because certainly generosity is about giving, giving freely, wholeheartedly, and abundantly, but also generosity is about giving good things. Here’s the question that I have. We asked ourselves this question and I’d like to offer it up to you. What happens when what I see as good, the community sees as bad?
21:02
What happens when what I operationally define as good, the community sees it as a hindrance? What happens when my sacrifice becomes a stumbling block? My giving is a gut punch. My help is hurting those I think I am helping. I want to pause there for a moment because I think that this can be helpful for everybody within the nonprofit sector. I think this is a healthy thing to reflect on, certainly us as a nonprofit, we continue to reflect on that. Are we truly operating in a way that the community desires? I believe with everything in me that at the heart of generosity is the well-being of the receiver.
Certainly generosity is mutually benefiting. It enhances the life of everybody involved, but is generosity, truly generosity if the receiver is being hurt if the receiver’s autonomy is being trampled over. I believe going deeper into generosity is realizing that my generosity, it yields to the desires of the local community. My generosity is never as powerful as the people in the local community. I believe that our generosity is unleashed when it’s at the service of others, when the well-being of others is at the heart of it. And not only that, but the wellbeing as defined by the community, because at the end of the day, it’s their community, it’s their lives, it’s not mine. As Priscilla and I were digging deep in, I mean, we were going through this for months. We were going through this, I mean, honestly years, because we continued to work in Haiti and these thoughts were rushing through our minds. We were able to understand compassion and generosity on a whole new level.
22:55
As we realized that at the end of the day, it’s about the community and not my savior complex, but what the community believes they need to move forward. Priscilla and I, reached a point where we said, “man, we need to either give up or do better”. And really giving up wasn’t an option. You know, when you’re called to something, you don’t just give up, you don’t just walk away. We couldn’t just walk away. We knew that we had to do better.
23:24
And so, we began by asking questions. We didn’t know a lot, but we did know that we didn’t know a lot. And so we started asking many questions to understand the context, the history, the culture, understanding what is going on in Haiti, and person after person after person, interview after interview, they all kept bringing us back to education. They told us that 80% of teachers in Haiti are not trained. Eight out of ten. 25% of teachers in Haiti haven’t finished high school. 60% of students in Haiti drop out before they finish elementary school. And Chris and I were sitting there thinking, how in the world is this happening?
There’s an educational crisis in Haiti, but it doesn’t seem like the rest of the world is really addressing quality education.
And one of our partners in Haiti, he helped me to understand that. He said, “it’s true. B, it’s true. Imagine Haiti is a car.”
I’m like, “Haiti is a car.”
He said, “imagine, just imagine B.”
I’m like, okay, Haitians love parables. They love imagery. I’m like, “okay, I’m with you, let’s go. Haiti is a car. Okay, yes.”
“Haiti is a car that won’t start, all right? And the international world with good hearts, good intentions, they want to help Haiti and say they see Haiti and they see that Haiti desperately needs a paint job. And so they come in and they’re painting over and over giving us these new fresh paint jobs. And it’s out of a good, sincere heart. But the reality is a paint job will never make the car start. To have this car start, we need to roll up our sleeves, pop open the hood, and go to the root of the problem, which is the engine. The engine won’t start. And they said, the engine is education. Education is the prerequisite to the development of any nation”.
25:19
One of our partners, Ferenc, he said, “education is something not even an earthquake can take away”. So, whoa, you see, when we’re educated, we can do for ourselves. We’re able to build for ourselves. We can build a better future, help us with education. And so with that, we said, okay, P4H is gonna be about education and not just building schools, which is important. Access to education is important, but we saw that a lot of schools were being built, but the students are dropping out. So we said, we’re gonna be about quality education.
25:48
One of the things Priscilla and I did in order to prepare ourselves, we said, we’re going to be professional students. We stayed in school for like 10 years. And together we finished our bachelor’s, master’s, PhD. And not every nonprofit leader needs to take this academic route that we took. But we took that route because we believed that we lacked a lot of education in the beginning. We don’t want a lack of education, a lack of knowledge to be our downfall again. So we studied a lot, studied nonprofits, community development, education, Haiti. We dug deep into education and improving ourselves. But the biggest change that happened is that we realized we could never, would never be the heroes of the story. We are not the heroes of Haiti. These beautiful faces that you see right now, they are the heroes of the story.
26:39
Priscilla and I, we realized that we, in order to tap into true change, we needed to work within the local context, work alongside of Haitians who have a desire to change their own country. And what’s powerful about this is that they know the problems way more than I could ever know the problems. They know the solutions way more than I could ever learn the solutions.
We learned our role as outsiders, even though I am a Haitian American, I still am an outsider. My role is to find these heroes, work alongside them, invest in them, affirm their dignity, affirm their ability, and then get out of the way and watch them transform their country.
27:27
As we were able to walk alongside of these beautiful, bright heroes.
We saw that the work P4H was doing, was just growing tenfold. It was increasing these teachers, these leaders in Haiti. Dare I say it, they loved Haiti way more than I could ever love Haiti. And why is it that they were working with a different air? It’s because of these schools, they had their children in it. These schools had their nephews and nieces in it. These schools had their uncles, aunts, and brothers that were teaching in it. It was so deeply intimate for them. And so when I tapped into that and I realized that I don’t necessarily need to give them power. I just need to realize that they already have the power. I just need to invest in them so that they can unleash that power and truly transform their country. I’m telling y’all, that was a game-changer. Things exploded with P4H when we were working within the local context and we were in.
29:45
The team was so effective in what they were doing. P4H was nominated last year by the UN, by UNESCO, to represent Haiti. This is a big deal for our team because our team, we intentionally recruit younger educators within Haiti. And part of that is because we go over mountains. There is no mountain that our teachers won’t climb, our trainers won’t climb. There is no valley lead that they won’t go through. There is no river that we won’t cross over.
30:11
We as trainers, know that our goal is the entire nation. And so we will do anything to reach every single teacher in Haiti. We’ve got a long way to go, but we will reach every single teacher in Haiti. And so we are a young group of educators. And the fact that an international organization like UNESCO, they chose Haiti over several other nations. That was something that affirmed that something so good is happening. There is a change that is happening. The outside world can see that these young leaders are doing something so profound in their country. They had Priscilla and I fly out to the UNESCO headquarters and give a speech talking about how powerful these leaders are. It’s a moment I will absolutely never forget.
31:06
The point I’m trying to drive home right here is that we’ve got to find these local leaders because when we find these local leaders and we invest in these local leaders, man, the impact will be out of this world. It will be far greater than you could ever imagine. It’ll be far more impactful than you could ever plan for. And again, it’s because the local leaders are the experts of their community. They know regardless of whether you come in with a bachelor’s, master’s, PhD, 20, 50 years of experience, you will never be the expert of their community. They will be the expert. And so as we are landing the plane, I know that I reached on and I touched on a lot of different points. I kind of wanna summarize and have four takeaways for you all. These four takeaways can be summarized in four words. Ask, find, fix, share. I said, ask, find.
32:00
That may be a little bit difficult because sometimes when we have generosity, there’s this physiological response, right? And I think it’s good sometimes because sometimes you need to act fast. Remember there’s a crisis, but even with a crisis, we need to stop and ask questions, understand the local community, understand what their needs are, understand what their assets are, and understand who you’re working with. We need to work alongside of instead of working for, ask before you aid.
33:03
Number two, find the true heroes. I mean, that sincerely I can say as P4H is growing and becoming a nonprofit that even the Haitian government, they’ve hired P4H trainers. We are the official professional development trainers for the North and the Northeast Department for the Ministry of Education. So many of these major organizations are turning to P4H to improve the quality of education in Haiti and the secret sauce.
33:31
The reason why it’s so effective is because Priscilla and I are not the heroes. The heroes are Haitians who are changing Haiti. Find the true heroes. You’ll unlock something so powerful. That’s generosity, I’m telling you. That’s transformative because you’re giving of yourself, but then you call others also to give of themselves. And that is the utmost type of generosity. Number three, fix systems, not symptoms. We need to go to the deep-rooted structural issues to have long, long-lasting impact. Again, this goes back to this idea of donors wanting to see true impact. If I give a plate of food today, how does that impact the child 10 years from now? Perhaps I’m giving the plate of food and on top of that I’m saying no, we need to invest in your education. We need to go further. We need to go deeper because we want that long-term impact. Fix the systems and not just the symptoms.
The fourth and final point is to share your journey. There’s something so powerful and beautiful about sharing your story, sharing your journey as messy as it may be. And I’m telling you, Priscilla and I, our story is pretty messy. I gave you guys a short glimpse of it, but even as we learned in the beginning that we were hurting and not helping, it was still so messy trying to figure out, well, then how do we do it? How do we, and what’s my role? Cause I have something to offer. It was a challenge and it still is a challenge, but we learned that along the way as we share our journey, this will help edify and help inspire other nonprofit leaders and help normalize the fact that generosity can be messy. Nonprofit work can be messy. The important thing is that we recognize where we’ve gone wrong and we are able to adapt, to evolve, to be flexible, to be responsive to the true needs of the community, to truly have this personalized response.
35:29
We need to share that journey with others because man, as I share my journey, even though I’m not working in Africa, I hope this inspires somebody who’s working in Africa. I hope it inspires somebody that’s working in Asia and Europe and you name it. I believe that as we share our journey, that’s what could happen. And I believe that people truly want it. People want to have this journey shared. Last year I said, I wanna share my journey on another level.
35:58
I’m going to do this thing that they call TikTok. The young people, I’m like, y’all are too hip for me. I’ll tell you that much. I’m too old. I’m only 33. I said, what is this TikTok? So I picked up my phone, sat next to it. I’m like, I’m gonna share the true story of Haiti. And I’m gonna share it authentically. As I was sharing the story of Haiti within the first month, 10,000 people jumped on. Within the months coming up, tens of thousands more jumped on. It’s been about a year. To this day, there’s over 130,000 people that joined this TikTok thing. And then Instagram started to blow up in a year. And I think what it is, it’s not just because I’m cute, which I am, okay? It’s not just that, it’s because I’m sharing an authentic story and people. They want to hear it. They want to hear the messy. They want to hear the bad. They want to learn. They want to understand. And they wanted to hear the story of the Haitian people, a people who despite what we’ve gone through, let me remind you, we are the first free black Republic in the world. Let me remind you that we are the first nation to abolish slavery and the slave trade. Let me remind you that Haiti was the country to make discrimination illegal when Haiti gained its independence, the second nation in the Western Hemisphere, the first nation in Latin America, and the first nation in the Caribbean to be established. When we gained our independence the Haitian people started to fight for the independence of several other nations and that’s why you see the Haitian flag embedded in flags like Colombia’s flag, and Venezuela’s flag, and that’s because we were a support to these other nations. They want to hear this story.
37:43
As I conclude, I would like to share one final story with you. In this story, you have a man on your left, his name is Logan. And Logan, he was one of the first staff members that we hired in P4H. And from the get-go, we knew that Logan was a star. We knew that he had it in him to be the best trainer that P4H has ever had. And let me be honest with y’all, up until that point, I was the best trainer that P4H had.
38:13
I’m telling you, I would walk in a room, I’d be, hey y’all. And then people would gravitate, I’m trying to be humble here, but they would gravitate towards me. And so as I was talking with Lola, I said, Lola, you can be far greater than I am because you have the context, you have the knowledge, you know this community far more than I could ever. So the most generous thing that I could do for you is ask you to be generous to yourself, invest in yourself, and walk alongside of me. And let’s train together to make sure that you are better than I could ever imagine.
Sure enough, months go by and Lola is killing the game. Lola becomes the best of the best. I mean, I’m talking about when he walks in the room and everyone forgot Bertrude existed, which is okay, but he becomes the best. I sat down with Lola after one of the trainings. I said, “Lola, I mean, you killed it. You are the best trainer that P4H has ever had. Now it’s your responsibility, Lola, to go and find the next best and invest in them.”
39:09
He said, “I got you, Dr. B.”
In comes Whisno. Whisno, special, beautiful man. As Whisno comes in, we see that he too has a powerful presence to him. Lola starts to train up Whisno. He said, “Whis, do you want to be the best?” Sure enough, six, or seven months later, Whisno becomes the best of the best. Even our evaluations show that the teachers are flocking to Whisno. And so we’re sitting down after one of the trainings where Whisno, he killed it. And we do reflections after every training.
39:39
And Lola sits down and says, “Whinso, you are the best that P4H has ever had. Dr. B used to be the best. And then I was the best. But today I need to tell you that you are the best”. As I reflect on that journey, as I reflect on that, truly it brought me to tears and it brought to life the words of Mother Teresa, unless a life is lived for others, it’s not worthwhile.
40:09
Thank you all so much for this time that we’ve spent together. And I hope that as I shared my journey, this has helped you to unleash a radical generosity, one that can transform the world.
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