Joelle Atallah is the Co-founder of EcoManka, an NGO focused on supporting eco-leadership journeys. As an NGO, they have faced funding problems. However, they kept working strongly as a team and reached out to people to provide them with awareness about their vision.
As a visionary team, they never give up and keep working towards achieving goals. She has a horizontal approach to decision-making so that employees get the best working experience while EcoManka gets the best results.
EcoManka offers a gamified eco-education for the youth. They look forward to revolutionizing youth education as they provide gamified experiences to enhance community engagement, eco-awareness, and climate action.
Learn more about Joelle Atallah and EcoManka, throughout the interview below.
How did you start your entrepreneurship journey? Do you have some advice for beginners?
The journey started through a group of strangers from worldwide sharing a common interest and vision of life. We felt that a meaningful life is one of service to others, a blueprint that can guide future generations in creating their own roadmaps. The journey is directly connected with learning through self-awareness with changes in behavior by collaborating and co-creating with those around us.
We will always consider ourselves beginners in being enchanted passionately about the social project we are working on. So perhaps the advice to give is to stay a beginner in the sense of keeping curiosity alive on how your projects unfold and how one transforms themselves while fulfilling one’s mission in life which ideally is directly connected to the work the entrepreneur is doing.
Since one person accomplishes no evolution or revolution, it is also essential to be collaborative and open to network and connect to similar souls being on the same journey to bring more impact to the project.
What do you believe is the most crucial part of continuing business seamlessly?
Apply a human-centered approach to your team and clients to keep everyone involved and provide deeper insights.
Adopt a regular design thinking process of prototyping, testing, re-iterating, and improving the solution, business, and marketing strategy.
A short-term and long-term plan with practical and objective deliverables connected to a business and marketing plan.
What are your goals through your NGO – EcoManka, and how do you plan to help individuals with it?
The overall objective of EcoManka is creating behavior change and supporting compassionate eco-leadership journeys in the most relevant and relatable way possible. Such an eco-leadership experience facilitates a transformation from ego to eco in understanding the vital role of environmental awareness and engagement towards leading a happy and fulfilled life.
They also understand the role of emotional intelligence in one’s own personal and professional journey while also befriending a strong connection to communities. The role of empathy is central in enacting the self-love needed towards feeling others’ perspectives to facilitate deeper connections and bridge divides, leading to a common understanding of an emergent future together.
Describe yourself in one word.
Diligent visionary
Do employees’ energy and enthusiasm have a hand in business success?
It is about energy and enthusiasm! It’s also about involvement and shared values. As the projects have received so far a large amount of volunteer support over the past 2 years, we have not needed to reach out HR-wise – clicks have been made a la falling in love style, and those that stayed are sharing the dream and vision thus becoming EcoMankers in the process.
We believe that by being part of the team, it is not only the project that benefits from expertise and engagement, but our employees and volunteers also are entering a heartfelt learning experience supporting their own personal road map towards their own life-fulfilling mission.
And when you experience personal growth in connection to the work you’re doing, you will feed the felt energy back into the project, thus entering a feedback benevolent loop.
How do you plan to motivate your team to go the extra mile?
We take a fairly redistributive model in our work process. The funding, be it grants, donations, or direct investor capital, will be spread fairly among our members, each one being offered a valuable working part in the division of labor schema. The primary motivation comes from being part of a r(evolutionary) journey in bringing a highly engaging eco-curriculum alive onto youth living in vulnerable communities. Imagining and feeling the effect of such a curriculum in people’s lives is already an intrinsic motivation factor.
How would you describe your leadership style?
We take a very horizontal approach by offering each team unit a high degree of autonomy in decision-making. Trust is a vital element next to honest and empathetic communication. We also believe consensual rather than an authoritarian top-down approach allows for closer team cooperation provided we attract the type of persons that thrill in this type of post-modern environment.
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Did you face any challenges when starting the EcoManka project? If so, how were you able to overcome them?
The main challenge, like any NGO, has been funding. How to start up a project without much capital while ensuring the team stays motivated. What we did to overcome this challenge from both ends: internally as a team and externally as customer facing.
Internally as a team, we established a clear timeline of action that leads to tangible results. Clear milestones and small successful achievements. In addition to sharing fairly the revenue acquired in the aftermath.
In customer-facing, we networked and reached out to everyone that we felt shared our vision and values. Networking and sharing our story is key to building good connections and surrounding our organization with like-minded people who will support, encourage and celebrate our achievements.
Are you adapting to digital transformation?
The EcoManka project brings digital transformation in direct connection to nature and experiential learning by providing a fun and engaging gamified eco-curriculum to teenagers in traditional schools and vulnerable communities, the latter receiving knowledge and access to modern technology.
Do you use innovative ideas to be unique?
That would be an ego leadership trait. All ideas are innovative in the right context and circumstances. As eco-leaders, thinking differently and questioning norms is part of a necessary heartfelt creation and transformative process.
Would you like to say anything else to our viewers?
Visit us at www.ecomanka.net. We would love your feedback, questions, and suggestions for collaboration. Investors, journalists, and academic institutions are particularly welcome. Contact us at info@ecomanka.net.
Connect with Joelle Atallah on LinkedIn.
Meet The Leaders Behind EcoManka
