The tea question

Hello everyone,

So our Friday was a bit of a slower day. The bank was open but we didn't have any focus groups planned for the day so we spent most of our time finishing off some lose ends with the audit, working on Access, documenting what we had been doing, writing up the election / nomination rules and writing up a more comprehensive board training plan. As I mentioned earlier we decided to extend the training process to 4 session rather than just 2 or 3, with the goal of increasing cohesion and increasing the contact points we will have with the board before formally presenting them at the bank day.

Maurice has been pushing to try and get us to learn how to run the bank on a daily basis so that next Saturday he can get more involved with the HIV Awareness Football Cup, but we have been holding firm that our lack of ability in Lou makes this infeasible. We ended up spending the morning at the house doing project work before heading into the bank. Although it is understandable that Maurice would like some help with running the daily operations of the bank, it does not make sense that we should do this work. Some people are too nervous to come in when they see us in the bank until we encourage them to come in, and we are worried that this is largely because they are comfortable with Maurice. Explaining to a new potential client how the account operates, and the importance of saving, is hard to do without knowing Lou. In the past the Football Cup was organised by a part-time field officer / employee of GIVE, but the previous person (Patrick) has moved on, and Maurice has been slow to find a replacement.

Access has been coming along but it is slow...I am trying to teach myself how to do it, so there is a lot of trial and error. I have gotten Katie to ask her mum if she can send along a copy of Access for Dummies with one of the other travellers coming next week (who is picking up some other stuff for us from her anyways), so I am hoping that will be able to help. I am tempted to email my Management of Information System's professor, but it is hard to explain the issues I am having over email...Generally it is a lot of minor issues that I struggle with, but have been finding ways around them. At times the program is too logical, and at other times I think it just follows a different logic than what I know.

After lunch we cleaned up and headed into the bank, where we were finally able to finish the audit. We have managed to reconcile everything to within 160 shillings ($2), which isn't perfect but pretty good considering everything. On the positive side, I have confirmed that I have no desire to be an accountant. We then were able to dig into the elections procedure, which can be a little nitty gritty. It is pretty interesting though because we get to see inside how an elections process can run. There are many small issues or concerns which we have had to take into account. For example we only are planning on / going to have 6 positions on the board along with a few alternates should someone have to give up their position on the board, yet there are 10 villages currently represented by the bank and village representation seems to be fairly important to people here. Henceforth we have had to design a system that can accommodate their desire for some closer ties to village representation. The ballot system is a little complicated to explain but basically 4 of the 10 villages have qualified to 'get the option for village representation', and the two remaining board positions can be from any village. Those 4 larger villages (Kagoo, Konyango, Kogada and the sublocation of Lower Kadongo) will get a ballot with two sections, one with representatives from their village only, and one general pool section with all candidates. Should more than half of the members from one of those villages vote in the first section (no matter who for), then they will retain that right to village representation and having the most voted for person getting a board position (they have two votes per ballot, with a maximum of one vote in the local pool). Every other village will just get two votes in the general pool section. At the end once the local representatives are determined the general pool votes will be tallied to find the 2 remaining positions, and the alternates (we are going to have 2-3 alternates selected in case people drop out).

Up next we updated the board training plans and walked through them with Maurice briefly. This is where it gets interesting. A surprisingly important issue which GIVE has faced in the past is whether to provide food or tea at our meetings with the community. We have found that when soliciting feedback from community members and providing tea that it can actually create a sense of entitlement in that it becomes perceived as them doing us a favour by providing feedback (although that feedback ultimately shapes / influences their lives not ours). To get around this, we have tried to only provide tea for training sessions that run over a certain amount of time, and lunch only if it is a full day training session. With the board training, we do not want to have their position to be seen (either by the board members or the community) as an entitled or especially privileged position which could encourage the potential for corruption. Therefore our idea (Diane from our team deserves the credit) was to use the tea as a metaphor / exercise to explain how important it is to work together as a community. At the first or second training session we would get everyone to volunteer to bring one "ingredient" or supply required for tea to the next meeting. For example collectively people could bring cups, hot water, tea bags, sugar and milk. Then later in the meeting we would surprise them with some tea to get through the first meeting and to reiterate that this would be a onetime thing. The idea makes sense in theory, especially when thinking about it in Canada, yet when we raised the idea with Maurice he was very skeptical. He argued that we always provide tea at training sessions and that it does not cause problems (a sentiment we don't entirely agree with). He also argued that it would be too expensive for people to bring those supplies, but we have offered to bring the most expensive or most difficult items as our contribution (ie. The milk, or maybe the hot water). Although it may sound like we are being horribly stingy and cold, the idea all along has been to move the bank towards being sustainably run by the community and we see the board as an opportunity to set the precedent for the future. The hope is that an exercise such as this could encourage the board members (and the community) to recognise that for it to be sustainable they will have to find ways to pay for the things they want done, and therefore make sure that it is worth spending money on. It is funny, according to Liz, the issue of tea is one of the most hotly / commonly debated topic between the exec team back in Canada. Who knew that tea was such a big issue!

Getting back to the board training, we have been looking for ways to get the board motivated and running efficiently in a few ways. We want them to feel responsible towards the community members in terms of representing them, to each other on the board so that they complete all the required work in an equitable manner, and responsible to GIVE such that they are willing to work with us towards our mutual goals. I have been trying to think of how this has been done in the past in my experiences and keep coming back to my time on staff at camp (where I have worked for the last two summers and will be working when I return back to North America). One of the amazing things about working at Camp Wenonah is how motivated the staff group is to support each other when needed. At a meeting anyone available will volunteer to guard for a 6:30 am swim at the drop of the hat if needed. During our pre-camp we focus a lot on how the camp has developed over time (so we feel part of a bigger movement) and also on the importance of what we do / the influence we can have on the camper's lives which both contribute to creating this atmosphere. We are therefore hoping to spend some time talking about the bank's growth, potential future and the influence it already has on the members. We are also going to spend some time going over what we learned from the focus groups, such as the nomination criteria that each group came up with and getting them to spend some time at the bank while it is open to meet clients they don't know. I would be curious to hear any suggestions or recommendations around what else we could do to achieve the cohesion and motivation from the board that we are hoping to create in addition to the tea idea and those I just mentioned. Fresh ideas and perspectives are always welcome!

I think that is all for now, we did a few other small things before going out with Maurice and one of his friends to get a soda and hang out, before coming home to read and get some sleep. Today we are working on the computer lesson plans further, creating a cheat sheet for Maurice on the computer and developing a proposal around the long term phase out plan for the bank (both responsibility wise and financially). Should be interesting to go through.

Cheers,

Graham

Ps. Feel free to send me a message if there is anything you would like to hear more about, always nice to hear back from friends back home

Pps. My dad found an interesting article from the Financial Times around inflation in Kenya, apparently it is being driven largely by an expanding credit market in addition to a housing boom. It’s curious to see the effects on the ground when going to the market with Pamela to see how high she finds the prices for things these days...gives you a perspective that you otherwise don't get

(Katrina Manson, "Kenya looks to ease growth sapping bubble" May 10th, Financial Times)(http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/18fdabd2-952f-11e1-ad72-00144feab49a.html)