Democratic Republic of Congo’s next generation of RRI coaches

You may know the Rapid Results Institutes (RRI) work in the US, helping government agencies and non-profits to end homelessness across the nation, but RRI works around the world to help solve other major societal issues too.

For many years RRI has worked on the African continent in countries like Sudan, Sierra Leone and Uganda.

Recently two of RRI’s Catalyst’s, Taya Darch and Garance Choko went to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in central Africa, at the invitation of SENAREC; a government agency created by the Government of the DRC to help support capacity building projects in the country across a range of areas, to talk about RRI’s methodology and to assess SENAREC RRI coaches who have been delivering it.

“ We were there to assess them, get to know them and find out their areas of strength they had and areas of weakness and look at the context that they’re working within, with a view to certifying them but also to come back and provide further training for them.” That’s Taya Darch, one of RRI’s Catalysts and a native of South Africa, who leads projects for RRI in the UK and around the world. “ It’s also furthering our mission, to expand our network and provide us with resources to help other organizations to bridge the gap between their intentions and their impact.” She said.

Taya’s colleague Garance is originally from France and like Taya, she works for RRI worldwide on a multitude of projects, between them they bring a wealth of knowledge and experience.

Garance explains the exciting and varied nature of the work for the coaches in the DRC, “ The RRI coaches in the DRC are working in all different sectors of society and all the different societal issues from gender parity to health to education and housing, so we can see how adaptive the RRI methodology can be. We were really impressed with their backgrounds, their passion and what they have been doing and we learnt a lot from them.”

RRI’s role for the DRC is to create a ‘certification process’ for the coaches and return to the DRC before the end of 2015 to start the training process with a four-day training camp with the coaches followed by two 100 day challenges to make sure they absorb their new skills.

Taya says, “ Once the coaches are trained up we will certainly think about how we can maintain contact with them to maintain quality control but also so they can stay in touch with us and what we’re doing so they have up-to-date techniques, otherwise training can become boring and dated, plus they will be able to teach us, as they develop and say, we tried this kind of training and it worked really well. So everyone will get something from this.”

Christian Makombo is the Communications Officer from SENAREC, and says the work of Rapid Results in the DRC is very important.

“ The international certification process of coaches in the Democratic Republic of Congo is a strong signal for change management in the country and you can read the smile on the faces of people in the DRC who have had their lives changed thanks to Rapid Results Initiatives.”

By creating a network of certified trainers, Rapid Results will not only safeguard the integrity and quality of its service and brand but hope to become the ‘go-to’ organization for governments and agencies around the world,     who are looking for a way to implement meaningful, impactful and sustainable change in their countries.
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