Published 7 July 2016
Do you walk your talk? Say what you mean and mean what you say? Or does your language take you down the roads you’re not willing to follow? Taking a closer look at how your words and deeds connect can help you see where you really stand. These were the sentiments that Maria Ncube covered herself with when she joined FPD in 2014.
In the past year Maria has found her footing with FPD and as part of her many achievements she has transformed the integrity of her Tshwane District team. There has been a level of honesty, reliability and accountability that never existed within the team until she took over the helm. She has built bridges because of her integrity and therefore she finds it very easy to work with on new initiatives or in challenging situations.
This resulted in Maria being awarded the FPD Integrity Award which left her speechless as she wasn’t expecting it. “I was shocked to hear my name being called out, I couldn’t even recognise my photo on the screen and it took me a while to realise that I had to go receive the award. I never thought that doing my job would yield such an excellent reward,” said Maria sharing her thoughts.
Maria joined FPD in October 2014 as a Clinical Nurse Practitioner from FF Ribeiro clinic and she was given a challenging role as an Area Manager to manage and implement Technical Assistance activities in the Tshwane District. She saw this as a huge milestone from working at a facility, she had to quickly adjust to supervising more than 30 mentors who are allocated throughout the district. Initially she was only responsible for her report but overtime she was expected to consolidate the reports from all remote mentor teams in the District.
“I had to embrace the fact that I need assistance from my teams and colleagues therefore I developed relationships with them to learn as much as I could about FPD Technical Assistance. Fortunately, the Operations Manager; The Leads; Technical Advisor; M&E Advisor; Champions and the Roving Teams were there to empower me with all the information that I required. I can truly say I have grown professionally and personally because of the FPD Tshwane Team. I am grateful for their support and owe a lot of my success to them.”
Lastly, Maria advices her colleagues to remember that ‘Umntu ngumuntu ngabantu’ – a person is a person because of people.