RFL in Action (and in Africa): Austin Klise

Austin Klise, RFL Academy 2018 Alumni, moved to Africa in 2019 (Sierra Leone). He’s pretty far out in the bush and is working with, First Things First, an organization working with locals who have good ideas and want to help themselves and their community. Austin’s work feels similar to his experience working in the RFL civic project team, only now as a full-time job in Africa. Austin shares that it’s been a wild experience applying the RFL lessons in a third world country with a completely different value system, social system, etc. For example, nobody lives as an “individual” everyone is defined by their collective culture — different than the States. 

Austin is currently working on two projects. One is surveying and writing proposals for village widows and their dependents. The other is starting an IT center at the local secondary school. Austin’s part in it is to work with the local team on a budget, business execution, and marketing. Autin is trying to find them some “seed” laptops to get the program going. Austin would love any support from RFL in donating a laptop or two to this very cool project out in Sierra Leone run by an RFL grad. The request for specs on laptops are: Ideally PC laptops with Microsoft Office. However, anything that runs and has a power cord will work.