It is the most wonderful time of the year – a time for reunions, parties, concerts, and celebrations, but also a time of sharing and caring. In the countdown to the New Year, gift hampers are being assembled with all sorts of items!

You may be one of the well-meaning Africans who mark their annual pilgrimages from the city to villages with a yearly giving day– visiting widows and orphans or the sick in hospitals with gift packs – bags of rice, bottles of cooking oil, spices, and colorful fabrics. While these gestures provide gratification for the giver and support for the receiver, this impact is often short-lived and, sadly, temporary. It might seem harsh, but these gestures, while noble on face value, are akin to simply putting a temporary bandage on the arm of a patient who has cancer.

As you plan your holiday gifts this season, consider channeling your generosity to address some of the more structural problems and root causes that keep people in cycles of poverty and dependency. Data shows that a sudden sickness in a family can alter their financial situation and send them into poverty. The death of the primary breadwinner is even more catastrophic. In contrast, access to clean water, nutritious school meals, quality healthcare, and education can ensure that children to grow into productive adults and who can ultimately transform the lives of their family members.

This December, instead of providing hundreds of bags of rice, consider adopting the primary healthcare center in your community and providing solar energy, to enable this center offer care at night when many emergencies take place. Consider providing year-long Wifi access so that doctors in the city or Diaspora can provide telemedicine during emergency surgeries. In addition, consider enrolling the elderly and children in the community into private or public health insurance programs that enable preventive care and cushion families during periods of sickness.

Instead of providing 200 bundles of cloth, consider adopting the primary or secondary school in your hometown, creating a library, a sick bay, starting a school feeding program to provide nutritious lunch to the children in the school, or supplementing the teachers’ salaries to incentivize their engagement with the students. This will transform the lives of the children in your community and ensure that more of them benefit from high-quality education, and will position them to apply for national and global scholarships and gain access to tertiary education and meaningful jobs.

Consider engaging your children and extended family in the ideation phase and in designing interventions that fit with your family values, interests and aspirations. If these opportunities appear too daunting for your family alone, consider enlisting the support of your age grade, alumni association, or Diaspora organization to tackle them as a group. It is important to recognize that pooling your time, talent, and treasure enables you to address the root causes of the problems in your community and achieve lasting impact.

You will notice that I did not mention building projects. I know that there is significant pressure from elders in communities across our Continent to build new wings of churches and mosques, or a new palace for the traditional ruler. Sadly, I believe that there are too many under-utilized structures in our rural communities, including our palatial country homes, which we only open for a few weeks out of the year. I strongly believe that many of these physical buildings should be converted to schools and hospitals, and equipped with the personnel, equipment, and supporting systems and structures to ensure effective execution and impact on the lives of the most vulnerable.

Thankfully, there are many emerging examples of families that are shifting from the bandage solutions to invest in long-term sustainable impact in the lives of our people. For example, Strive and Titsi Masiyiwa, through the Higherlife Foundation, have partnered with a range of local and global organizations to provide education and health investments in communities across Zimbabwe. The Chike Okoli Foundation, established by Chief (Dr.) Stella Okoli, in memory of her dear son, Chike, partners with the Nnamdi Azikiwe University to provide entrepreneurial training and technical skills to unemployed youth in Anambra State. Our family, under the leadership of our chairman, Mezuo Nwuneli, created – MUNA Foundation, which provides health insurance for the elderly in our hometown. The ONE Campaign is partnering with the African Philanthropy Forum to launch the Diaspora Health Fund to provide critical grants to credible local nonprofit organizations that are serving the most vulnerable in our rural communities. In addition, ONE is also partnering with the Insurance Development Forum to establish Healthbridge – to enable the Diaspora to provide health insurance for the most vulnerable in Senegal.

It is often overwhelming knowing where to start and how to engage. Many of us are worried about imposing our own values and thought processes on others, or getting dragged into causes that appear too big or too difficult to handle. I would suggest that you start off by observing, asking questions, visiting the schools, primary health care centers, and other community projects this holiday and conducting some preliminary due diligence. Ask a few pivotal questions.

• What underlying problems are driving the needs we see on the ground? Focusing on the symptoms rather than the root cause will bring you right back to the same place a year from now?
• Who is already working to address the underlying problems and the needs?
• Where are the gaps?
• What do the most vulnerable say they really need?
• What role can you, your family, and your community play in the short, medium, and long-term to really drive impact?
• What are your areas of interest and passion?
• How much are you willing to commit annually?

Recognize that there are established resources that are available to support you through this process. These next steps are critical to moving from a charitable but short-term mindset to one where you can have transformative and generational impact! You can leave a legacy that will last beyond the December giving cycle! Start today!!!

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Through Wealth4Impact, we are offering 20 Nigerian families the opportunity to learn how to structure their giving and ensure generational wealth and generational impact. This six-month program, offered for free through the generous support of our partners, will help you clarify your values and plans for structuring your giving. 

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