Fall Blog Post #3 – Kenya

Jack is an American student who is staying at a youth center in Kenya for 5 months while he works on a social venture. He lives with the children and works closely with the staff of the center. Youths 14 and under are receiving gifts provided by an international donor. The staff members had allocated gifts to each child to be given out in a ceremony. Jack was to give out the gifts. As he gave the children the gifts, 4 did not receive gifts due to a lack of supplies and oversight by the staff members. Jack found black hats at the bottom of the box and gave them to the children who didn’t receive gifts. They were sad. The staff didn’t care.

The issue is that four children feel alienated from their peers and the staff has no drive to rectify the situation. Jack was seen as being the gift-giver so they naturally place the blame on him and their relationship will potentially be frayed by this act. However, Jack must tread carefully not to anger the staff members in any potential solution he comes up with as the staff members have already mocked him for caring too much about the children’s feelings.

Jack is a stakeholder. He would like to have a good relationship with both the staff and the children of the youth center. This would help both in his professional capacity and his personal capacity while in country.

The staff of the youth center are stakeholders. They wish for their youth center to be a respectable establishment. They are concerned with spending their limited time on the major initiatives that matter rather than focusing on small perceived slights

The children are stakeholders. They simply don’t want to feel left out and alienated from their peers.

Option 1: Apologize to the children. Explain to the children the gifts were provided by an international donor and they unfortunately didn’t send enough. The pros of this option are that the children will be told the truth and the staff will not be angry at Jack’s decision in any way. The con is that the children likely will still be sad that they didn’t receive a gift and weren’t thought of. Short-term, the staff’s relationship with Jack won’t be impacted, while the four children who didn’t receive gifts will be angry/sad at Jack for a time, potentially negatively impacting this time at the center. Long-term, the relationship with the staff still won’t be affected, while the relationship with the children will eventually recover as long as Jack continues to treat them well and put effort into their relationship.

Option 2: Buy gifts for the children and hold a special ceremony for them. This will cost Jack a small amount of money, but will be rather easy to carry out. The pros of this option are that the children will potentially be satisfied that they received their ceremony. However the cons are that the staff will feel like Jack has blown the situation out of proportion, the children may feel singled out in a negative way, and the other children may become jealous they aren’t involved in the second ceremony. Short-term, the staff will be angry with Jack while the 4 children likely will be satisfied. Long-term, the staff and Jack’s relationship will still be frayed, and the children likely will forget about the incident shortly thereafter.

Option 3: Purchase a black hat and wear it around. This will cost Jack an extremely small amount of money and will be very easy to carry out. The pros of this option are the children will grow to be satisfied with their ‘presents’ as they will likely think the hat is cool if Jack wears it around. Additionally, the relationship with the staff won’t be frayed in any way. The con of this solution is it could swing the pendulum the other way and make the other children jealous they don’t have a black hat. Short-term, the children will be satisfied and the staff will not have any issue with Jack’s actions. Long-term, the children’s relationship with Jack will have a strong foundation and his relationship with the staff will not be impacted.

Option 3 is the best solution for Jack. It provides positive results for all of the stakeholders: with the staff not being impacted, Jack’s relationship with the children being positively impacted, and the children not feeling left out. The other options will lead to some sort of negative impact. Meanwhile, the ease of implementing this solution is also a positive. All that would need to occur is for Jack to purchase a black hat, and wear it around periodically for the next five months. Although there is a potential for the other children to feel left out, this is unlikely as they all received a ceremony and other gifts that the 4 children did not.

Leave a Reply