Vision 2020: What is your personal vision statement?

“EDPRS 2 is about each Rwandan playing his or her part in the development of the country and all Rwandans benefitting from it. Hence the tagline: “uruhare rwacu, mu bukungu bwacu”. This has been prioritised by the engagement of all concerned stakeholders right from the planning phase in order to enhance implementation. In this regard, citizens were widely consulted to solicit their views through forums such as Umuganda and focus group discussions”, reads an extract from EDPRS 2 document. During one of the Sunday sermons my pastor lamented that the government is more cell based than our church! I never understood that what the pastor meant was that our government is more organised and focused than the church and perhaps some individuals! A critical analysis shows that the government is more focused in executing her mission and vision of stirring the country to development than some people are prepared to do it individually. Rwanda vision 2020 and its strait EDPRS 2 are two concepts that every Rwandan dreams about. However, what remains unknown to a common Rwandan is how we shall benefit from this noble vision without each individual input! Perhaps the answer lies in President Kagame’s speech during the launch of EDPRS 2, “…achieving this means putting more emphasis on self-reliance, which in turn means increasing productivity at every level- individual Rwandans and the private sector, taking full ownership of the strategy and working in a more coordinated manner”. As evidenced from the President’s quotation and EDPRS 2 extract above, what is perceptible is “uruhare rwacu, mu bukungu bwacu”, which can be loosely translated as our role in economic prosperity and development. What may be emphasised here is individual role in the envisaged prosperity equation. The other day, I was seated with a group of friends and our discussion rotated on whether we ever evaluate ourselves in terms of individual accomplishments and against what benchmarks? It dawned on to us that unlike our government, most of us did not have individual mission and vision statements of what we need to achieve at specific time intervals! In his book The seven habits of highly effective people, Stephen Covey one of the renown leadership and management gurus of 21st century maintains “we detect rather than invent our missions in life…each of us has internal monitor or sense, a conscience, that gives us awareness and singular contributions that we can make…everyone has his own specific vocation or mission in life. Thus, everyone’s task is as unique as his specific opportunity to implement it. In a word, each man is questioned by life and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible. But fundamentally, your mission statement becomes your constitution, the solid expression of your vision and values.” The key concepts from this chapter are constitution, mission and vision. Traditionally, these concepts are written down as core values that guide states and corporations. However, modern times and emerging realities show that these concepts will be shared and used interchangeably amongst states, corporations and individuals for maximum benefits. On the importance of having individual mission and vision statements, Stephen Covey advises “…writing a mission statement changes you because it forces you to think through your priorities deeply, carefully and to align your behavior with your beliefs.” As you progress further in his book you realise that having individual vision and mission statement provide structure and order in your life, allowing you to focus on certain critical events and ignoring the less important ones.In a nutshell, the government has vision 2020, what is your individual vision? At an individual level everyone needs to set out their visions to feed in the bigger country vision. As a matter of fact, we cannot become what we need by remaining what we are! One of the targets of vision 2020 is to grow income per capita from the current $600 to $1200 by 2018; the bitter reality is that the country may realise this target amidst some poor individuals. To avoid this, each of us should focus on what to achieve in both short and long term. Like in case of the government the best way is to set standards against which to evaluate performance and there is no better way of setting such standards, than writing individual vision and mission statements stipulating what you want to achieve in life. In meantime keep in mind that winners never quit and quitters never win!The writer is an educationist, author and publisher.