ALUMNI - GIVE BACK TO YOUR SCHOOL
When you go on leave, visit your nearest rural area and see how certain schools look like. How I wish each one of us had a chance to visit the nearest public university to see the hostels (pa level) and the ablution blocks.
Anyway now things are better after the cholera wake-up call. We are all advised to have strong and active alumni networks. Now the question arises: What exactly does the word alumni refer to?
DEFINITION
The word alumnus refers to a male who is a graduate or former student of a specific university, college or school. The masculine plural form is alumni.
The feminine form is alumna which refers to a female graduate or former student of a specific university, college or school. The feminine plural form is alumnae.
Notice that the plural form alumni is now used for both male and female for convenience’s sake.
The word alumni is not only restricted to academic and learning institutions but could also refer to a former member of an association, a former associate or even in rare cases a former employee.
Actually, a person who is no longer at any institution but is still in touch by way of contribution to that particular institution qualifies to be part of the alumni.
AIM
Alumni associations provide a platform for social occasions for fundraising. The funds that are raised are usually meant to plough back into their former institution with the view of improving it or as a way of saying thank you.
You will agree with me that there are certain institutions which look perfect and nothing is lacking seemingly. When such a scenario presents, the alumni association will still give back to the institution just to show gratitude.
These alumni reunions also provide a social platform for people to share ideas and encourage one another. Psychologically, it somehow becomes easy to uplift each other because of having the same foundation and it is something like: if he can make it in life, then it means that I can also make it because we have the same starter formula.
Normally when people realise that they have the same beginning (background), they have no problems relating to one another and they easily bond and make meaningful decisions together. This is exactly what happens with the alumni hence their powerful give back policies and activities.
INACTIVE ALUMNI
You may be wondering why some alumni associations are more organised than others. In every association, there must be a leader, that is to say, someone just has to come up and organise the group.
If the group is not ticking, it means that you have no leader yet. Trust me. once you have the right group leaders in place, things will begin to move and ideas will start flowing. Even the laziest alumnus will suddenly start showing interest in the group activities.
What I am trying to say is that if your alumni association is passive, change leadership and you will see progress. If you have a constitution you must surely have provision for change of leadership when necessary instead of being stagnant due to a failed leadership.
ACTIVITIES
Active alumni are involved in a number of activities which usually point to development or simply improvement of their former institutions. I will look at a bigger picture worldwide and not only concentrate on the Zambian situation. Okay at least I have never come across an alumni association whose aim is to destroy their former institution.
I will only write about the activities that have taken off because there are certain activities which are just on paper and they have been on paper for decades. Some of the activities that I have seen are as follows:
• Building
It was interesting to see a huge truck filled with pockets of cement turn into a narrow road leading to a not so prestigious secondary school.
A modern computer lab was earmarked for construction by the school alumni. This particular act was such a relief to the elated School Manager. Very soon every pupil would have their own computer to learn on.
• Painting
There is one thing that really impressed me about one alumni association. This group sat down and decided that they never want to see any dirty wall ever at their former learning institution so they have embarked on a “paint a dorm campaign” and they have vowed that they would raise enough money to paint the cafeteria, library, the science labs and school hall before the year – 2018 - ends.
What a busy, wise and ambitious association. How I wish all the alumni could be like that. You should see the big smile on the school manager’s face.
• Fencing
I met this group of alumni which vowed to fence their former school (secondary) which is extremely extensive, meaning that it covers a very large surface area.
This brilliant idea came from a very funny incident when a goat strayed from a nearby farm into the staffroom and ate a marking key for one mock examination paper.
The teacher responsible was typing the work on his laptop but took a short tea break only to find the goat chewing the last bit of the marking key.
How else could he explain late submission of Test Papers (question paper and marking key) to his boss?
Off course no one believed his story so he formed this vibrant alumni association and advocated for fencing of the school to keep out stray domestic animals from a nearby rich farmer who happened to be the all powerful PTA chairperson, oops!
• Donating
A group of alumni decided to donate 20 computers to their school. The school had problems with the ICT examinations previously and no one wanted history to repeat itself.
All was set to receive the donation and pupils assembled in excitement. Indeed, the donation came and thank you messages were exchanged.
A week later, the chairperson of the alumni got a call from the ICT teacher to explain that the donated computers were extremely outdated and overtaken by the times in many different ways.
Eish! Please be careful with where you source donations for your former learning institutions. Sorry to say but some donors may want to use alumni as a dumping ground.
• Just chilling
I met a colleague who told me that he was going to the ‘Old Boys Association’ meeting. That is the name that they gave their alumni association.
He went to an all-boys institution and in those days, they were meant to believe that they were “Metals” which they fortunately really turned out to be.
One of the items on their agenda was to relax and remind each other of the good old days. The relaxation is good for their health as it takes away all the stress that they accumulate at their work places and maybe at their homes sometimes.
• Social support
I have come across one amazing alumni association which gives moral, economic and spiritual support to its members such as former classmates in terms of assistance at funerals, birthday parties, kitchen parties, weddings and so on.
Help is also rendered when a new born is announced in a family of one of the alumni. When one alumnus is sick for example, visitations are arranged to encourage the patient.
This social support works well for one alumni association which has even replicated the uniform that they used to wear when they were at school.
It looks beautiful except that now the uniforms are double the size and you can easily tell by looking at the faces that they are not the actual school girls but they are the former group.
The idea of wearing uniforms helps in identification issues and also keeps them united. The purchase of uniforms also acts as a fundraiser because the uniform sales are forwarded to development projects at their former school.
Other identity items that I have seen are caps, T-shirts, chitenges, track suits and replica PE attires in general. This is fun!
DISADVANTAGES
A friend once told me that every human action has both advantages and disadvantages. I am not sure whether to believe her or not because certain actions look very good at a glance but when put under a microscope, the bad side is enhanced.
I am still not sure whether alumni associations have a bad side, at least not a serious one. After a few arguments we established that there are no serious disadvantages except the few which I will attempt to explain without hurting anyone hopefully but that will be in another article. For now continue your good work as alumni.