Biography

Gou Tehe Ines Kela studied Economics and Management at the Faculté Universitaire Privée d’Abidjan (FUPA). In recent years, she has worked as a primary school teacher and has also provided home tutoring in mathematics, French, and physics to secondary school students.

This year, she set herself the goal of spending ten months within a rural community in one of her country’s regions in order to learn about a culture different from her own. She is undertaking this experience as a Volunteer with CorpsAfrica/Côte d’Ivoire. For Gou Tehe Ines Kela, this service—her first of its kind—represents more than community engagement; it is an opportunity to grow in an environment beyond her family and familiar surroundings.

Through this service, she hopes to deepen her understanding of servant and transformational leadership, as well as values such as empathy, humility, and attentive listening. Through approaches such as Human-Centered Design (HCD), Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD), and Community-Led Development (CLD), studied during PST, she has come to understand that efforts to meet community needs cannot be effective in the long term without listening to communities and ensuring that they themselves initiate their own development. Relying solely on external solutions can overlook the fact that communities often possess the resources and ingenuity needed to address their own challenges, as no civilization is devoid of capacity or innovation.

In her view, the quote that best reflects the importance of perception in community development support is by Ernesto Sirolli: “The future of every community lies in the passion, imagination, and resources of its people.”