WARwanda - A Terrific Place to Grow and Learn

Being on the third week of my job here at WARwanda, I have already experienced enough to share credibly about the employee experience at this company. If you are looking for a place where you go to work and get bored and scroll through your Facebook screen all day, and get paid at the end of the month for that, then I am sorry to disappoint. But if you are indeed looking for a place to contribute with your talents and skills while being challenged and stretched at the same time, then this is a place for you.

I was looking for a place where I would feel valued for what I bring to the table and at the same time have ongoing opportunities to learn new things and horn on my skills at the same time and I feel like water access Rwanda has done exactly that.

Here are my top three highlights for the past three weeks. You can already tell I love the number three!

Initiative

During my first week, I was given little-to-no-instructions of what I should be doing. At the end of the week after learning all I could learn about the company, I gave a presentation about what I was hoping to do and accomplish. This intentional choice of letting you be during your first week is a brilliant strategy to not kill the dreams that a new employee brings to the work, especially in their first days when they still have a fresh eye. Such an experience is usually unheard of but it definitely shows the goal of WARwanda to equip and grow its employees. There is always structured work to be done but I am more than thankful for the opportunity to be self starting and be creative. I have realized that being able to bring as many ideas to the work during any employee’s first week sets the pace and the standard for the rest of their time at the company.

Intelligent and supportive peers

Working at WARwanda provides another great opportunity to work with peers who are smart, who challenge you to push your limits, and are always ready to give feedback. I like the Robin Sharma quote that goes: “If you are the smartest one in your peer group, it might be time for a new peer group.” This simply means that hanging around people who are smarter and better than you, makes you smarter and better as well. This is the experience I have at Water Access Rwanda everyday. Not only do I work with smarter people but also better personalities, and this is undoubtedly making a huge difference already. For instance, I had the chance to hang around Rodrigo Garcia, the business development consultant from Spain and having his work ethic in the room has made me improve a couple things. Seeing how he does not allow any challenge to stand between him and his goals and the quality of work he produces has certainly increased my productivity and quality work a tenfold. Another highlight while I am still on this point is that I appreciate our Monday morning opportunity to give presentations. We get the opportunity to share our accomplishments of the previous week but also share our plans for the new week. We get to learn about each other’s work and receive feedback from the rest of the team.

Making a difference

The spirit of excitement is what will welcome when you enter the WARwanda office. We know the terrain we have chosen to venture in is not the easiest one, but the difference that is made by even the smallest actions- phone call, late night office, six hour trip to Kamembe, trainings- is so much more worth the effort. This might sound like nice talk until you get to the field and see it happening yourself. We recently went to the field in Rwesero which is a small village, right in Nyarugenge district and we passed by this small river where some guys were washing their bikes and their feet after work and in that same river thirsty kids and women with kids on their back, were fetching and drinking to quench their thirst. Though this single scene is not a full representation of the water situation in Rwanda, but its mere presence is still reason enough for each one of us to wake up and go. WARwanda is in no way intimidated by the enormity of such problems but has instead decided to move forward and do whatever it might require to make water scarcity a thing of the past.

This only week three, I am looking forward to seeing what the weeks ahead have for me. But if you have always wanted a sneak peak into the WARwanda employee experience, all I would say is “You are welcome!”