As an organisation, it is often tough to find a model of values that represents exactly what your team strives to achieve. We therefore decided that we needed to build our own “model” using recycling that will clearly demonstrate the Singakwenza version of our organisational values.
The base of our model, upon which everything else stands, is HUMILITY. As hard as this can be in a world where success is often equated to the perception of material wealth and public displays of self-importance, we strive to ensure that no matter who we are interacting with and where we are, we treat everyone with equal respect and courtesy, and never make anyone feel inferior in any way.
Upon this base are two arms – both of which require a value to be carefully balanced with another value to prevent the collapse of the model.
On the first arm, there is AUTONOMY on one side – as each member of our team works independently in the field – and this is balanced with INTEGRITY – the ability to do the right thing, even when no-one is watching.
The second arm has TRUST on the one side – we are all adults and are trusted to do the job that we have been employed to do – and this is carefully balanced with ACCOUNTABILITY – understanding that if we do not do what we are trusted to do, that there will be clear and immediate consequences.
We hold these values strongly in our organisation, and each member of the team is reminded of them regularly in an effort to help us fallible humans to remember what a huge responsibility we have in the communities in which we work.