Training Complete!

Hello everyone!

It has been a very busy week, I am sorry for not having been able to put a post up in a while, we have been quite busy. The internet stick is becoming increasingly difficult to both use and to get a chance to use. I will update you until Thursday and then cover our Friday and Saturday in another post since a lot happened on those days.

Monday was spent doing audit training with the board. Unfortunately Katie was feeling a little under the weather but managed to I convince her to stay home to rest while I ran the sessions. We had decided to do two smaller sessions with half of the board each to allow for more individual feedback and support. The plan was to show them how to do the audit before getting each group to complete half of it. The sessions were supposed to start at 1 but Maurice and one of the board members didn’t show up until around 1:30ish. As a result I managed to run through most of the session with one group, such that I could get them started on working through their own audit before leaving to get the other group started. Once the first group finished their section of the audit I went through a couple more things and a conclusion, before returning to the second group. It ended up being a little hectic, but the second group managed to understand it pretty well, so we are hopeful about them being able to complete one. The audit is a little confusing since the we have been having some trouble pay Maurice back for expenses through the bank account, but we still think that their work can add value.

Once the sessions were complete I headed home for dinner, and thankfully Katie was feeling a lot better. Tuesday we were scheduled to have our 4^th session at the normal time: 2pm, but a Maurice got double booked with an unexpected meeting for the education team and we rescheduled for 11am instead. This meant that we had to complete a lot more prep work Monday night, but were happy with what we had ready. So anyways since everyone on the board had agreed to arrive early, we showed up at the bank at around 10:15 to get set up. The result was that we were pretty excited when the first board member strolled into the bank at 11:20. However by that point we had decided that we would have to postpone the training session to Thursday (for a longer session) since the time was already very compressed to accommodate everyone’s schedules. As it turned out, two of the members were stuck in town with work while one of the members was just about to catch a matatu to come, although none of them thought to call and let us know. This was a little disappointing since we had already rented the chairs, done all the printing and prep work for the meeting. On the plus side though it gave us more time to work on what we wanted to say, and allowed up to spend more time on some sections we had cut down for the shorter session. Another plus side to the cancelled training was that Katie and I were able to go to Holo market to do some shopping, pick up some fruit and visit a few people we had met before.

Wednesday was pretty fun as we got to learn how to make mandazi! I am sure that this statement does not excite you as much as it does me. Mandazi is the Kenyan version of a doughnut, and they are very tasty (although not super healthy).

Making lots and lots of mandazi with Mumma Syprose

That day we also shared a call with our exec Liz back in Canada and did a bunch more preparations for our meeting on Thursday. We are ever grateful for all her support, especially considering that she is writing her LSAT next Monday (not the best timing from our project’s perspective, but it has allowed us to be more independent). It ended up being a little tight in terms of getting everything all prepared for the Thursday session as it was to be twice as long (8 hours) as our other sessions. That being said we did feel a lot better about how well prepared we were compared to what we had put together for the Tuesday session. The session started a little bit late, but not any later than usual and we jumped into closing off the audit and going through the rules and regulations of the board with them, and developing the oath they will swear at bank day. It was very gratifying to hear Pamela mention that she felt that she understood how the bank works, and the job that Maurice fills much better as I am sure his job was a bit of a mystery to them before. A very useful suggestion made by Liz was to run through some scenarios with the board after reading over the rules with them, just to clarify some of the grey areas. This ended up being very valuable in the end as they struggled with a couple of the questions. The oath section was also fascinating to see them working in Luo on developing the specific wording of the oath. I noticed that all of the board members participated a lot more easily once they could speak in Luo. Alas our Luo in not yet good enough that we could follow along!

Joice, Fredrick and Maurice brainstorming the oath

Working through the oath in Luo

We want to make a clear distinction between the job the Maurice occupies (the daily operations) and the one that the board will fulfil with the bank (one of governance, security and direction). We walked the board through a scenario where one of them is visiting a friend of theirs, who then asks if they can take money back to the bank to deposit for them. The answer we were looking for is that they cannot do this, as it is risky and complicates their role, but every member agreed that they would do this. I think they all understood our reasoning for not filling this role, but ultimately we have no real control over whether it happens. Bank members often come in to deposit money on behalf of their friends, but hopefully they recognise the spotlight which their position puts them in.

More training at the bank

After a break we went over a section looking at how the board may evolve over time to take more responsibility from GIVE. This was a very tough section to prepare for, and to determine how we wanted to present it. The hope was to set the presentation up in a way that the board members would be optimistic about the future, while at the same time recognising that we intend for their position to play a very important role in the bank moving forward. I think they responded fairly well to what we said, but it is always hard to tell. We really wanted to avoid giving them a firm plan for how things will change over time since it is hard to come up with a firm set of requirements before they take on new responsibility and we want a lot of the changes to develop organically. We moved on to look at challenges the board could face during the year before running through another case study – this time about how to deal with a committee member who disappears right before a fundraiser that they are organising. It was very interesting to see how they took the case. The primary idea which they continued to come back to was that the organising committee was at fault for only having two people in charge of organising the fundraiser, such that the fundraiser was too dependent upon one person. I have found the case studies very interesting to both create and run, simply as a way to explore how the board members think. They are also good to keep coming back to when a point is hard to explain.

The next section was probably one of the harder ones. A couple members on the board had requested that we talk about microcredit, since the members had been asking them a lot of questions about it. Since the fact that we do not currently offer microcredit has been a sensitive issue for a while, we thought it would be useful to spend some time talking about it with the board. We stopped offering it last year after deciding that we wanted to sort out some structural issues first, but many community members have not been happy that we have not been offering it. We decided to approach this section by explaining what microcredit is, before jumping into what is required for a successful microcredit program, as a way to show them that it is currently not feasible but was something we could work towards in the future. They had lots of questions and it got to the point where we tabled it for later, since a few of the board members did not seem satisfied by our answers.

Once that section was complete we reviewed their homework from the previous session: to meet and talk with a member of the bank about why they save. It was pretty cool to see both the variety of clients who save at the bank, but also how similar their issues or goals seem to be. Most if not all of the clients which the board members talked to are saving in some form or another for someone’s school fees. Once we finished sharing those stories we broke for lunch. The lunch turned into us splitting up and going to one of two restaurants in Obambo market. Katie, Pamela, Fredrick, Joice, Joyce and I all went to one place for us to get food. The lunch time turned into a great opportunity to talk with each of them on a more personal level. Katie discovered that Joice, the church leader for all of Kanyawegi who can be pretty quiet during the sessions, has had 14 children, although only 10 of them are still alive. I had no idea that anyone could have that many kids, let alone not show the effects of that time spent in childbirth.

Once lunch was over we headed back to the bank to go over some more process oriented sections around ground rules (generated by the board) for their meetings, and determining the roles they wanted within the board during the year. Thankfully it seems like they are pretty accustomed to going through this process, such that the word quorum translated very easily. Once we went through those sections we moved on to the process for contacting GIVE, which they also seemed to get. We have been trying to settle upon what kind of contact and reports that we want from the board, and that we can provide in return. The hope is that we can make the relationship as two way as possible to keep them motivated, and us well informed. The low point of that section was however that one of the board members asked if they could all be paid a travel allowance during the year, which goes against our idea of their position as a volunteer one. Apparently the definition of volunteering is different here however, in that it is still common to receive a small amount of pay or compensation for “volunteering”.

Katie leading a small group brainstorm

We ended off the session with a few more discussions, scheduling the final events prior to us leaving, and reflecting on their goals from training. It was interesting to find that almost all of the board members had put learning how to audit as a goal, although that was probably mostly due to the audit being the most ‘mysterious’ and tangible part of the training sessions. Once that was finished we got the board members to develop some personal goals for the year. We are planning on running individual feedback sessions with all of the board members next weekend to review the training, provide feedback and take a look at their goals. I am pretty excited to see how those turn out.

It was a long training session...

 Unfortunately we now reached the tabled discussion section: which turned into a long discussion around microcredit. Although we explained all the many reasons for us not being able to offer microcredit this year, some of the board members still refuse to accept what we are saying. There are a few reasons, but the main one is that we do not feel that the bank is prepared to take on the risk of offering microcredit. For the program to be successful, the bank will require a firm base of capital to loan out and well trained people to evaluate the projects on an economic basis. Both of these are still being developed. The bank also should be well established so that it is considered strong and reliable, yet the bank only just moved to a new location, and now only has one employee rather than two. The board of directors has also just been elected so there has been a lot of change going on, and we do not want the board to be associated as a means to get microcredit. There will be a lot of pressure on the board members during the selection process if they are involved, and we want them to focus on their true reasons for their position first before getting into microcredit. Anyways we had to close off the discussion eventually as it was starting to lose its usefulness. Hopefully we can address any further board member concerns on an individual basis. Katie and I had a really good talk with Pamela the next day about the microcredit and she at least understands / accepts our reasoning.

Once we got home from the training session we were fairly brain dead, but very happy to have finished off the training sessions. They were a lot of work, but very productive and I think I learned a lot from running them. Anyways I am getting pretty tired so I will leave it at that. Tomorrow I will try and write a post to cover Friday and Saturday which will include going into town, welcoming three more girls to the house, and going to the soccer tournament! Hopefully it will be a fun post.

Cheers for now,

graham