Author: IGIHE

The following life ethics would take you far in life.

1. Before you pray, believe. Your prayers wouldn’t mean a thing if you don’t believe.

2. Before you complain, appreciate. Many people complain about things going wrong in their lives, but fail to appreciate what’s going right for them. If you can take a little bit of time to appreciate what’s actually working for you, you will feel a lot more better about life.

3. Before you speak, listen. This is the basic of communication. When this principle is missing, communication becomes ineffective. If you want to build better communication with your partner and people you come across, learn to listen. Besides, it makes you wiser.

4. Before you quit, try. People want to be successful, but they end up quitting before their point of success. Learn to try and try again, and never quit.

5. Before you spend, earn. As simple as this ethic might seem, it’s hard for people to practice. This is the reason people go broke and enter into debts, it’s why people can’t save and it’s why people’s finances are in a mess.

6. Before you die, live. You’ve got one life to live, but it’s surprising to find that many people are just existing and not living. Give life your best shot, learn to live in the moment and forget the past, and more importantly, learn to be who you are and enjoy what life has got to offer every single day.

{{Source: www.elcrema.com}}

This very common question really contains within it two other questions of key importance for you to immediately address: “Why should I care about you?” and “What is your value to me (or my company)?” Don’t get bogged down with rambling recitation of your work history. The best answer is your value statement, commonly thought of today as a personal branding statement.

An effective value statement conveys the kind of person/professional you are, what drives you and why those things matter. It isn’t just what you have done professionally, but your demonstrated passion for doing those things that will propel your conversation forward.

The following are seven key parts of a great branding statement:

{{Introduce yourself, then move on}}

This is the most straightforward part of your answer, so it shouldn’t take forever to answer. Introduce yourself thus, “I’m John Doe.” Then move on quickly.

{{Talk about your main focus}}

Relate a major element of what it is that you actually do when you’re at your job in a very simple sentence. This is not the time to talk about your job title, where you work or how long you have been doing whatever it is that you do. For instance, you might say something as simple as: “My main focus as an accountant is counting widgets.”

If you haven’t had a job doing whatever it is that you are applying for, it’s advised that you quickly do something related to it. Take a course, Volunteer. Do an internship. Even after you’ve been doing something for a short period of time, you can honestly say you are doing it. Leave the details for later. You want to convey that you are the type of person required for the job.

This is the time where you roll out your passion for what you do. Figure out what it is about your role that really excites you. Show your enthusiasm with a “What I love to do is…” sentence. Examples:

“As a widget maker, I love getting all the mini-widgets lined up to make a great big widget.”

“I love working with the people in my team and helping to move our process of widget organizing forward.”

These kinds of statements demonstrate that you are highly motivated and really care about what you do. Evidence of these traits provides assurance to a hiring manager that you not only can do the job, but also that would you would be a great personality fit.

{{Talk about what you bring to the table}}

This is where you demonstrate who benefits from what you do. Boil it down to something really simple like: “My widgets help cure sick people,” “My widgets help people to be more creative” or “My work helps my team.” All are ways of helping. By demonstrating who benefits from what you do, you begin to effectively convey your value.

{{Target your audience}}

Strive to understand your audience, and tailor your message to them. Your work might benefit a plant manager, a supply chain supervisor or a CEO, among others, in different ways. Figure out what about your work would be most important to the person you are speaking with, and talk about that. By taking the time to identify his or her issues and concerns, you can plant the image in his or her mind, “This person can help me and my company.”

{{Accomplish a goal}}

What do you help people to do? Rather than listing a whole series of things, distill it down to a single important thing. Example: “I help my company save money.” A clear simple sentence invites a question to go into more detail and engage in a conversation.

{{Show emotion}}

Figure out something about your job that gives you a good feeling, and convey it, even if just with a smile. When you show an emotional identity with the work you do, you demonstrate how you fit into a company’s culture.

When you answer the “tell me about you” question with a value statement, you demonstrate your professional qualities, build interest in you as a person and increase the chance of beginning a meaningful dialog. Then, you are well on your way toward ending your interview with success.

{{Source: www.elcrema.com}}

This year’s Customer Service Week run under the theme‘Building Trust’ with inviting customers and employees to celebrate the four day celebration, from 2nd to 6th.

The theme of the week recognizes the importance of trust in forming strong, productive and lasting relationships with customers and employees.

The week was launched on 02nd October 2017 with a staff engagement forum in the office boardroom where all staff gathered for a Customer Service training session on UAP OM Treat Customer Fairly (TCF) Business requirement.

The team was also told about the week program and initiatives for the Company celebration.

The UAPManaging Director, Mr. Calisto W. Ogaye with the Customer Service Manager, Mrs. Claudine Mukakibibi launched a promise to the internal and external customers‘To be Good Company’ as they look forward to build and maintain trust with both customers.

Customer Service Week is usually marked with customer’s recognition initiatives. UAP Insurance Rwanda commenced the week with internal customers (Staff) recognition on Tuesday 03rd before starting with external customers visits.

On 04th October the Senior Management led by the Managing Director met with Direct Sales Force (Agents), in a meeting aimed at celebrating them as customers but most important at creating a platform to discuss how sales could be grown and how best UAP promises could be sold.

The UAP team also has run the entire week with several initiatives as it looks forward to close with enough feedback to strategize to maintain trust and become Rwanda market preferred Insurer.run

Owned by Africa Transformation Network (ATN), a Christian Non-Governmental Organization, the school donated furniture worth Rwf1.6 million to Nyamata Hospital under one of its programmes ‘Urwaze Ubukira’, which started by distributing 15 sets of furniture that can be stretched out and used as chairs and beds.

Clemence Uwineza, a caregiver at Nyamata Hospital said that the furniture comes in handy. “We, as caregivers, usually sleep with patients or sleep on the flour. It was not a good state. This furniture serves two purposes, for sitting during day and sleeping during night,” she said.

The Director for Nyamata Hospital, Dr. Alfred Rutagengwa welcomed the donation saying the hospital will now have appropriate arrangements for patients and caregivers.

The Executive Director of ATN Rwanda, Charles Kabeza, said the furniture was delivered to caregivers to enable them give utmost attention to patients for quicker recovery. “We provided this furniture to caregivers because we know the importance of care-giving in the healing process yet hospitals do not have facilities for them. Their life will be made easy,” he said.

He said that they will add more creativity in making local items that provide multiple solutions to institutional and domestic problems.

The project of making multi-purpose furniture was carried out by students and teachers of Xtra Mile Vocational Training College in a period of six months and target to supply a chair to every patient’s bed in all hospitals across the country.

{{Fractured teeth}}

Tooth fractures can be as a result of grinding both subconsciously and unconsciously. Unconsciously when you know you don’t do it, yet there are visible cracks and fractures in your teeth, and subconsciously when you do it even though you don’t intend to. Either way, it’s unhealthy, and is caused by stress. It can also cause cavities and other dental issues, so you should take it seriously.

{{You’re gaining weight}}

High level stress always attracts weight gain. This is because it increases your craving for foods that are high in calories, which adds to your weigh

{{Aching joints}}

Apart from regular pain in the joint as a result of tedious work or exercise, you can also feel pain in the joints just from being stressed out. This is because stress promotes low grade inflammation

{{Recurring feeling of fatigue}}

Stress promotes fatigue. You feel exhausted always even when you don’t do tedious work. Sleeplessness is also another symptom

{{Heavy headaches}}

Is there always that splitting headache that hits after you talk for a while or you get involved in some work? It could be a sign you’re seriously stressed out.

{{Increased blood pressure}}

To help you survive a precarious situation, stress fires up your sympathetic nervous system, which in turn cranks up your blood pressure so that your limbs and muscles are ready for action. None of that is an issue in the short term. But over time, chronically elevated Blood Pressure can overwork your heart, leading to damaged arteries and blockages. Be careful to put stress in check to forestall a rise in BP

Source:www.elcrema.com

Founded in 1981 by Indian Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, the Art of Living Foundation is an educational organisation with a presence in 156 countries with a purpose of offering tools to eliminate stress and foster a sense of well-being through breathing, meditation and yoga practices. The foundation and its sister humanitarian organisation, the International Association for Human Values (IAHV), enjoy a consultative status with the United Nations’ Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC).

Hiteshini, PhD in Surgical Research from McGill University in Canada, is in Rwanda for one month purposely to offer workshops on stress relief techniques. She has offered the courses for the past 17 years in many countries. She concluded a three-day workshop in Kigali last Thursday and will conduct another workshop from October 13, 2017 at The Manor Hotel in Nyarutarama.

Speaking to IGIHE last week, Dr Hiteshini said she is offering the Happiness Program which is an entry level program but they have higher level programs that prepare people to be trainers.

“We want to have a Happiness Centre in Kigali as we have them around the world. It will be like a sanctuary where people can come and recharge their batteries, de-stress, and then leave feeling lighter and happier,” she said without specifying when the centre is expected to start.

She said they teach simple but powerful breathing techniques, relaxation and some yoga to release the stress from the system.

“The breathing techniques are simple but very powerful and everybody can practise them. We have specialised programs for children, prisoner rehabilitation programs, trauma relief programs for areas affected by disasters and programs for the corporate sector, amongst others,” said Dr Hiteshini, explaining that the way a person breathes reflects the state of the mind and by breathing in particular rhythms, a person can alter their state of mind and experience stillness.

“This is a skill. How to live peacefully, how to be happy, how to be able to dissolve frustrations, anger, depression and this is where the breathing techniques come in,” she added.

After acquiring techniques taught in the Happiness Program, people can practise on their own at home on a daily basis in order to keep their mind free of negative emotions. The Art of Living has existed in Rwanda for the past five years and has a local trainer who conducts Happiness programs on a monthly basis.

The Art of Living Foundation played a major role in ending the 52-year war in Columbia between FARC (rebels) and the government, which signed a peace accord in September 2016. The foundation is credited for bringing opposing parties to the negotiating table in Iraq, the Ivory Coast, Kashmir, and other parts of the world.

A 2014 study by the American Psychological Association at American Institute of Stress in New York indicated that stress caused 54% of people to fight with people close to them.

At least 65 independent studies conducted on four continents have demonstrated a comprehensive range of benefits from practising breathing exercises taught on the Art of Living Happiness Program.

{{The man}}

Ernesto Guevara de la Serna, known worldwide as Che, was born on June 14, 1928, into a middle-class family in Rosario, northeast Argentina.

He had a left-leaning, and literary, family life before beginning his studies in medicine at Buenos Aires University in 1948.

Two years later, Guevara started the first of two motorcycle journeys through Latin America which in successive years would help shape his political views and sense of purpose.

Guevara became convinced during his journeys – 4,500km and 8,000km respectively – that the solutions to the widespread poverty and oppression he had witnessed were armed revolution and communism.

After briefly returning to Buenos Aires to complete his degree in 1953, the newly titled Dr Ernesto Guevara left Argentina, and later a career in medicine, to pursue a political future which would see him feature in revolutions from Cuba to the Congo.
The revolutionary

Guevara is known for his role in the Cuban revolution of 1959, which witnessed Fidel Castro’s removal of Fulgencio Batista as the country’s head of state.

The two first met in Mexico City almost five years earlier, where Guevara had moved in 1954.

Having joined Castro’s “26th July Movement”, aimed at seizing power from Batista, Guevara rose to become a key figure in the revolution and was duly appointed as president of the National Bank of Cuba and minister of industry following its success.

From this positon, he was able to roll out domestic plans for land redistribution and the nationalisation of Cuban industry. He travelled around the world as an ambassador for the country.

Guevara guided the Castro government towards closer alignment with the Soviet Union through his diplomacy, which would prove a crucial relationship for Cuba throughout the Cold War as Castro sought to prevent the United States from interfering in the country.

Six years after the revolution, Guevara left Cuba in order to spread Marxist revolt elsewhere. He arrived in the Congo in 1965 and attempted to mobilise armed rebels forces there against the Congolese central government. His efforts failed within seven months.

By the end of 1966, after a brief return to Cuba, Guevara had switched his attention to Bolivia and a revolutionary movement against the government there. However, less than a year later Guevara was captured by US-backed Bolivian forces on October 8. He was executed the next day, aged 39.

{{His legacy}}

Lauded by some, lamented by others, Guevara’s name has become synonymous with rebellion, revolution and socialism.

Critics point to his role in a Cuban government which oversaw extrajudicial killings and political repression as evidence of the damage caused by his dogmatic faith in communism.

Supporters say he was a hero who fought and died for his beliefs, and see him as a romantic figure associated with the universal fight for freedom.
Cuban leaders walk arm-in-arm at the head of the March 5, 1960 funeral procession for the victims of the La Coubre explosion, blamed by the Cuban government on a US bomb attack on the Cuban ship La Coubre in the harbor of Havana [The Associated Press]

Regardless of his contested history, Guevara’s face has become an international popular culture icon.

But his legacy in Latin America continues to be felt in a more literal way.

In countries including Bolivia, Cuba and Venezuela, governments continue to draw inspiration from Guevara, shaping the lives of Latin American people.

{{In his words}}

Here is a selection of words that belong to Che.

“If you tremble with indignation at every injustice, then you are a comrade of mine.”

“I don’t care if I fall as long as someone else picks up my gun and keeps on shooting.”

“The revolution is not an apple that falls when it is ripe. You have to make it fall.”

“I am not a liberator. Liberators do not exist. It exists when people liberate themselves.”

“Do not shoot! I am Che Guevara and worth more to you alive than dead.”
{{
Source: Al Jazeera News}}