One of the most impressive examples of Robert Fritz’s structural principles in action has been taking place in rural communities in western Uganda since 2000. Students at the URDT Girls School, starting at the age of 10, are taught the principles of the creative process: They create a vision of a better life for their families, contrast it with their current reality, hold the discrepancy between the two as structural tension, and come up with action steps with their parents and their siblings to realize their shared visions.
Vision vs Current Reality & Action Steps illustration by
former URDT Girls School student, Ruth Kanyonja,
The Creative Process and a Two-Generation Approach
These girls are practicing a two-generation approach using the creative process. When the girls (each one from a disadvantaged family in a rural village in western Uganda) become students at the URDT Girls School, their parents or care-givers commit to participating in visioning seminars led by the girls each semester, and they commit to engaging with their daughters in carrying out “Back Home projects” each semester (on which their daughters are graded). There are 200 girls in the school each year—so 200 families are participating in this two-generation education. By the time these 5th graders graduate from High School, their families have all moved from low-income, subsistence households to become middle-class families, each of which serves as a “model home” in their respective communities, teaching their neighbors what they have learned about creating their lives and improving their health, incomes, and education. This two-generation approach to creating better lives has benefitted 1200 households, comprising 6,000 people since its inception in 2000. 98% of these households are food secure, 58% live in much safer and better-built homes, 95% use solar power, and 97% of the girl graduates are working and supporting themselves.
URDT Girls School student Jesca Nsmire and her mom show their banana
and coffee plantation to Doug Lockwood
I encourage you to follow and support the work of this amazing non-profit African Food and Peace Foundation (AFPF), which is based entirely on implementing Robert Fritz’s principles of the creative process at our partner educational ecosystem in Uganda, URDT. Enjoy & share Fritz’s movie: The Uganda Project. You can donate to support this incredible and innovative ecosystem, which uses the creative process for sustainable, rural transformation on the AFPF website.
CreatorTools has continued the relationship with AFPF and URDT by providing Robert Fritz’s Creating Your Life course to faculty and staff at African Rural University (ARU), an all-women university located in Kagadi Town, Uganda.
Robert Fritz’s Creating Your Life Course is a 3-month program that teaches how to incorporate the creative process and structural dynamics into one’s life-building process.
About the Author:
Patty Seybold is the board chair of the African Food and Peace Foundation (AFPF), and has been a supporter of URDT and ARU for over 20 years. She has been a member of the ARU Council since 2006, and was instrumental in moving ARU from a vision to a reality. Patty also published a book in partnership with leaders at URDT, It Takes a Child to Raise a Village, capturing the stories of URDT Girls’ School students…
In addition to her volunteer work with AFPF and URDT, Patty is a consultant specializing in co-creating customer ecosystems with the participants, students, beneficiaries, or end-users of services as the design center. From 1998 until the present, after the publication of her first best-selling book, Customers.com, she has been acknowledged as a leader in customer experience and customer innovation.
Read Patty’s full bio on https://www.afpfonline.org: