Team YLM

Hello All,

Hope your weekend went well. I will like to take this opportunity to introduce ourselves as Team YLM. We will be responsible to take up various roles in YLM to help bring sustainable change to our societies and our beloved country at large with the support of our external and internal partners.

We are a team and will encourage ourselves to be dedicated to the mission of YLM.

We are all involved in the brainstorming process to bring to life ideas to help individuals and the society we live in to progress. We believe everyone has a talent and with the right MINDSET we will prepare individual who will not only succeed as persons but will be ready to take up leadership position in the future governance of our beloved country.

There will be opportunities for the right individuals to represent YLM on international and national seminars in the coming year and years; and to promote our idea of practical sustainable thinking.

Our vision is to bring sustainable change in our core beliefs and behaviours pattern to the youth and lay the foundations for the future we want generations to come and sustain.

Without commitment and team work we can achieve nothing. We have a chance to make a significant difference to the progress of our beloved country.

Being part of Team-YLM will open doors and opportunities for the hard working individuals who do not think about their own success first, but that of the society they live in.

The most endearing endeavours anyone can commit to is make another person succeed.

Have a blissful week.

Regards

Kenneth

Officers, please!

Are you fired up for your motherland? Do you want to get seriously involved in shaping up your future and make an impact on those around you? Are you passionate about achieving goals? Are you driven to relentlessly pursue objectives? Does 'a true patriot' describe you? Are you self-motivated and ready to share this motivation? YLM is looking for youth exhibiting these pro-active traits to become officers in the organisation. By youth, we mean young WOMEN as well as young men. Stand up and be counted! e-mail YLM.Ghana@gmail.com with a description of where you are, and where you see yourself and those you'll have impacted in 5, 10, 20 or 50 years from now. Have a nice and fruitful day

Sustainable thinking

Altering society's long standing perspective from myopia to a sustainable mind frame will not be easy; but IT CAN BE DONE! After all, views of our society are images people put in their minds. By honestly examining and challenging the beliefs and assumptions that control our minds, we can see the perspectives that produce today's economic and social crises. New beliefs and assumptions make possible new thinking and behaviours. This means that anyone can become a sustainable thinker. Once we make a commitment to this higher purpose, we are in control of our future. Once we are in control of our future, we can help to decide the fate of our society and country. And with the right thought processes from new beliefs and behaviour fate works itself out to prosperity no matter who is there.

Founder's Day

Today is a holiday in Ghana. Osagyefo Dr Kwame Nkrumah, the great visionary and first president of independent Ghana, would be 100 today, had he lived.

So many things have been written everywhere about Osagyefo Dr Kwame Nkrumah that I won't add yet another hagiography saluting the great man.

A great man he certainly was. He had an acute sense of what Ghana and Africa needed, and he was determined to make it happen regardless of the cost to him. A dreamer he was, but -and that is what made him so peculiar- a do-er he was too. If two words can sum up what he was and what he stood for, they would be: a patriot and a visionary. He worked relentlessly at achieving what he considered his beloved country, and his continent, needed.

Now, I am more than a little disappointed that we decided to honour the great man with yet another holiday. Here was a man whom we recognise as instrumental in whatever significant progress Ghana made in the twentieth century. Here is the mastermind behind the very idea of African Unity, whom we implicitly and explicitely celebrate already with the African Union Day.

Today, our country, and Africa in general, is not visibly nearer to being a developed country than it was when Dr Kwame Nkrumah died 37 years ago. The engine is stalled. It sputters now and then, but never roars anymore and we are not going anywhere fast, or -some would argue defeatedly- at all.

Yet, our deciders found it fitting to offer us yet another day of sitting around omo tuo and a beer, or [insert your preferred holiday food and chilled beverage] all day. This, in itself, sadly shows their lack of vision.

Tomorrow again, omo tuo digested and beer-induced burps squelched, we'll sit and stretch our hands, hoping others will lend us money and foreigners will come and invest in our country.

What if, instead of flattering a very human tendency to laziness and carelessness, our deciders, driven by a real vision for their country, had launched a nation-wide selfless, community-serving activity? Plant a tree, clean the beaches, clean the street gutters,... There are so many things that need to be done to improve our lives, our environement and our country, and it seems so sadly strange that we should celebrate such a pro-active person as Osagyefo Dr Kwame Nkrumah by doing... NOTHING.

Wake up, my dear country fellows! your country won't develop without your participation, on foreign loans and foreign investment only. Stop selling it cheaply for yet another day of idleness and sweetness of life.

Nkontompo ne nnabraba sεe ɔman

Treachery and double-dealing spoil the state.

Pro-active innovators

I have observed a -kind of- mindset portrayed generally in society: There are four basic modes of thinking in today's society that individuals have adapted and embraced.

• About 30% of the population are victims of a system in their own minds. They are inactive and waiting for someone to save them or for the next catastrophy.
• About 50% are survivors or sustainers. They see themselves swept along by the environmental and market conditions. They take one day at a time with no real game plan at all. They wait for a change to occur before they react with the basic decision to sustain themselves.
• About 10% are dreamers. They are active dreaming up new ideas every morning that will change their world and make them successful; but they never really get out of the shower and take any action of their idea in time to catch a trend.
• And finally there are the 10% like you, who are innovators.

While the victims are inactive... While the survivors are reacting and hanging in there... And while the dreamers are in the shower active but not productive... The innovators are out of the shower, dressed and already proactive and in the market.

The innovator has the visionary ability to look ahead, the philosopher's ability to learn from history, the inventor's ability to employ breakthrough concepts and the entrepreneur's ability to deliver those concepts completely and effectively to global needs.

A proactive innovator anticipates change.

We need innovators to move our country forward; to encourage entrepreneurship and steer our way of thinking by brain train. If our leadership does not have the right brain train and mental focus, the people will suffer.

It's all about leadership.

Change we can achieve

The most urgent need is for all of us to look inside ourselves and decide if our core BELIEFS and PERCEPTIONS, and the behaviour they spawn, allow us to live up to our deeply felt passionate values and aspirations.

If we can become motivated to engage in this type of deep-rooted appraisal and allow ourselves to be helped to progress through the normal stages of change all the way to actions needed, the inevitably economic prosperity and social well-being will follow. It is my hope that we can achieve this goal collectively.

Akɔneaba ne anwono

Going and coming is the way to weave: It is by hard work that we achieve success.

Thanks God it's Friday?!

I don't quite get this "Thanks God it's Friday" stuff. OK, I thank and praise my God every single day of my life, but why on Fridays in particular?

I'm not dumber than most, and I understand it's because it marks the end of the working week for most employed workers. What I don't get is this: do they really all hate their jobs so much that they seem to be living for the weekends only? Are we expected, socially, to hate our jobs?

Now, this is one of the things that have to change in our current mindset if we want to succeed. One is bound to hate one's work if it is only a means to an end, and if this end is the monthly paycheck. I'll never say it enough: money can NOT be made the altar at which we worship, the ultimate aim of our whole lives.

Let's get back to the basics once again: if we believe we can achieve anything we set our minds to; if we have a clear idea of where we want to go and of the path we are to take (and the milestones along it, in the form of intermediary objectives) to reach there; and if we are prepared to pause and take stock of the achievements, obstacles, and errors to make them stepping stones to reach farther, there is absolutely NO reason why we should suffer through our work week to only "live" two days a week.

This is the most blatant demonstration of how wrong we are when we put money above all other considerations: we fail to identify what to study, then a career, that we can find gratifying because we'll like it, feel we are capable of doing it well, and find reward in the knowledge that we excel at what we are doing. This excellence, in turn, will be recognised by our teachers and employers and make the relationship smooth and satisfying. We'll also keep our job, and be secure financially. Isn't that what we have been aiming at all along?

Monday through Friday are days you use to display excellence in a job you enjoy and possess the necessary skills to do well. Saturday and Sunday are days when you step back, relax, meditate and ponder on how well you've been doing so far, and what steps you should be taking to make your life even more rewarding and gratifying. There is a time for all things in life, and finding this balance and rhythm is part of the overall feeling of satisfaction you want to experience.

Ɔdehyeε anko a, akoa dwane

If a royal doesn't go to battle, the slave runs away. (If a leader does not give a good example, his followers will desert him.)

Exciting news about the YLM Facebook group

Our Facebook group passed the 100 members mark earlier this week and is already 141-strong as of today 12 noon!

Special thanks to Nana Appiah Acquaye whose Facebook status this morning invited his contacts to discover more about YLM. Do emulate him! YLM has a lot to offer to you, the youth of Ghana: inspirational and motivational messages, one-to-one counseling with the group moderators, job announcements, business leads, tips to enhance your self-confidence, advice on goal setting, etc.

We remind you that YLM also has a dedicated email address: YLM.Ghana@gmail.com; and a yahoogroup: youthliberationmovement@yahoogroups.com.

We posted a call for action yesterday, inviting those of you who can speak and write one or several Ghanaian languages and are computer literate to work together towards the localisation of computer systems.

YLM also has a host of initiatives ready to be deployed in the agricultural and agribusiness sectors.

Invite your friends to join, start contributing to the discussion on FB or the yahoogroup, feel free to get in touch with the YLM moderators...

Let's set the ball rolling!

Aso nni berε

The ears have no time to spare. (Responsible people are seldom idle.)