Ministry to Nonprofit Leaders Expands Worldwide

BVM Pat Bombard (l.) and Leadership Development participants in Kampala, Uganda, interact via Zoom.

When I was discerning next steps in my ministry path in the 1990s, I settled on three reasons for my decision to focus on leadership development for individuals and organizations:

• Catholic sisters will continue to help people in need through nonprofit organizations.
• The nonprofits must be healthy workplaces for those who bring their passion to serve.
• To be effective at creating healthy workplaces, nonprofit leaders must possess self-awareness, strong interpersonal skills, and a commitment to positive values.

I next made the decision to learn about the challenges facing nonprofits by leading one—which I did for 12 years as executive director at the Institute for Spiritual Leadership in Chicago.

In 2008, I stepped into my current role as director of a leadership project at DePaul University. I provide courses, workshops, and trainings combining contemporary leadership theory and practices with the leadership teachings and values of St. Vincent de Paul. I do that work on campus and for various Vincentian-related groups around the world.

In 2010, I converted an existing on-campus course called “Values-Centered Leadership” to a free online format. There are now two levels to the course. Each provides an introduction to theory, offers a chance to try out new tools and methods, and invites personal reflection and integration through weekly online posts.

As of December 2021, the online courses had reached participants from 75 countries, with Level I completed by more than 1,730 participants, and Level II by 560 participants.

A few Catholic sisters who took the online course early on were ones I had come to know at Tangaza University College in Nairobi, Kenya. In 2015, they invited me to assist in creating a leadership training program for sisters serving in congregational leadership in Kenya. The idea was to create a program “in Africa, by Africa, for Africa.” Previously, sisters in Africa primarily relied on visiting lecturers from the United States and Europe to provide training.

We received funding from the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation, and in 2016, I went twice to Kenya to offer two five-day workshops based on the content of both levels of my online course. I then began returning to Kenya each year to help train the local sisters who volunteered to serve as presenters for the three, five-day modules of the new program.

My last trip to Kenya was in February 2020, just before COVID-19 locked down the world. There, I met the first sister leaders from Uganda to graduate from the leadership course. They were eager to bring what they had learned in Kenya to Uganda. To fund this expansion, we sought and obtained grants from the Conrad Hilton Fund for Sisters and a BVM Ministry Partnership Grant.

Due to COVID-19, we moved everything online during 2020 and 2021, offering both presenter trainings and leadership course modules through Zoom. Finally, after a two-year wait, the Ugandan team, with the help of a few of their counterparts who flew in from Kenya, offered the first in-person module to 32 sister leaders in Kampala, Uganda, in early December 2021. Meanwhile, the Kenya team also offered the first module to 18 sister leaders in Tanzania in August 2021.

Obviously, the need is great. As I look back, I am thankful for the discernment in the 1990s to focus on leadership development. As we look forward, we plan to continue to offer these essential leadership programs in 2022.

To learn more visit: leadership.depaul.edu