Work Update

Monday, June 7, 2010

Work has been moving along quickly, and I am not sure where to begin. Since Cameron arrived (the Director of African Operations for SpanAfrica) we have set up lots of plans to move forward on projects with many of the Grassroots partners (Baobab Branch, Nina Initiative, Morokishi Nursery School, etc.) as well as several large projects for SpanAfrica itself.

We are nearly finished setting the curriculum for the Baobab Branch’s Business Development Course, which began last week. There are several students, including Felix, who also helped on the Bright New Ideas solar lighting project when I first arrived in Kenya. Cameron and I facilitated a class on CV development, but haven’t been available for several of the other classes, but it is going very well.

On Friday evening, Cam and I did a major clean-up of the Baobab Branch office, and were able to create a lot more space in the room. I am still working with Amos on an operating budget, which I will use to create several budget projections to forecast outcomes of various expansion strategies for Baobab Branch. Baobab is already bursting at the seams in the current space, and it is exciting to examine all of the ways that Baobab can grow from here.

On Saturday, Cam came over to my house and we spent the afternoon on the porch next to my room (the porch where people go to find themselves) planning our goals for the next few weeks. We have a lot to do! We are setting projects for incoming volunteers, and establishing goals for our local grassroots partners and scheduling visits for some of the other partners as well as a few potential partners in Kenya.

Cam and I are working on putting together a complete package for all the Grassroots Partners to help them understand the role of SpanAfrica, and all of the services that Span has to offer. We are also creating a manual (that Cam calls our Colouring Book) that will serve as a simple informational guide to organizational management for all our grassroots partners. We hope to have both of these packages done ASAP so that they are ready and printed by the time we start meeting with the grassroots partners in about 3 weeks.

One very exciting development is that Cam and I have planned an extensive trip to visit with many of the East African Grassroots partners, and will depart for about 2 ½ to 3 week tour beginning on July 20. We will travel from Nairobi to Tanzania, where we will visit Daphne Murphy, Daphne Rowe and Pinky Rowe at the Rift Valley Children's Village for about 2 nights. We then will go on to Dar es Salaam and Zanzibar, where we will spend a few days. There is one partner organization that we will meet with in Zanzibar, but then we feel it is absolutely necessary to spend a day or two on the white sand beaches. Work is rough.

From Zanzibar we return to Dar es Salam, and travel across Tanzania to Uganda and Rwanda, where we will meet with additional Grassroots Partners. Finally, we will cross back over into Kenya from the Northwest and back to Nakuru. While we have a lot of preparations to do, such as contacting all of the Grassroots Partners to set up meetings along the way, finalizing all our documents and creating a solid presentation for each, there isn’t a lot we can do as far as travel preparations. Paul (my Kenyan dad) is in Dar es Salam today on business, and is checking out the overland transportation options for us to travel from Dar to Uganda. Otherwise, we will be catching cheap busses and sleeping in the least expensive places we can find!

Today Cam and I went to the weekly meeting for the Nina Initiative. We toured the new greenhouse, constructed recently by a member of the TAWA Group, another women’s group in the area. We attended the Nina Initiative meeting, and then walked up to the local Agriculture Officer’s office to inquire about local grant and support programs. He wasn’t as informative as I hoped, but did provide us with some information on a hunger prevention initiative called Njaw Marufuku Kenya (NMK) that I am going to write a proposal for Nina to apply for funding. The funds support a variety of programs and award project and administrative awards ranging from 80,000ksh to 2.4million ksh. The Agriculture Officer indicated that it is a competitive process, but it can’t hurt to try. In the meantime, there is much work to be done to get Nina prepared to submit such a rigorous application. Nina has experiences a great deal of administrative difficulty over the past year, and after much discussion, it makes sense to really start from scratch in creating new goals and establish a timeline of objectives and strategy for achieving them. This will be a good exercise for the Nina women, and will also help me and I work with Cam in creating a workbook on organizational management for all of the SpanAfrica Grassroots Partners.

We met this afternoon with Steve at Morokoshi Nursery School and discussed the plans for Morokoshi, especially in relation to the upcoming arrival of Emily and Trevor, two new volunteers who will be dedicated primarily to Morokoshi. It was a great meeting, and ended with a great game with a bunch of brightly colored bouncy balls in the yard.

I am also starting to work with some local businesses on strategic planning and business plan development. Amos is connecting me with a Baobab Branch graduate who is currently operating a hair salon in Nakuru. I also spoke at length with Steve from Morokoshi today about his business in the Top Market, and using the various branches to maximize his profit. We are planning to meet later this week or early next to go over his current model and identify any areas for improvement.

All in all, work is insanely busy, but I love all my projects and all the people who I am working with. It’s hard to keep up with everything, and sometimes it’s hard to roll this into my more descriptive blog posts, but there will be a lot more to come in the next few weeks!