Mission Accomplished-ish

Workshop: Mostly Successful!!

(The photo is one of the small-groups writing out ways they can make
LUGADA stronger. I'm holding a member's baby so she could serve as
secretary for the group)

I think it is a safe assessment to venture that yesterday's workshop
was successful. The objective of the workshop was to teach about
LUGADA's revolving fund and how to borrow and repay money. We also
lead a brief discussion about LUGADA's mission and role in the
community. I just finished comparing the pre- and post-workshop
surveys and by all accounts, the attendees did learn how to apply for
and repay the loan and most of them were able to write one sentence
about LUGADA's mission.
Educationally, the workshop was a success. Socially, it was fun and
we all enjoyed visiting and eating Auntie Norah's catering.
Organizationally, it was a very Ugandan workshop. We said the
workshop would start at 8:30, knowing full well it would start at 10
at the earliest. I hoped an early start time would motivate people to
arrive. Unfortunately, the early start time didn't motivate my
supervisor, who wasn't ready to leave until 9. We didn't arrive at the
center until 9:30. A few minor crises were resolved early (the power
was out, but then quickly returned, our expert canceled but Florence
found another…), but larger problems remained throughout the day. We
were expecting 30 attendees, but one entire group forgot and didn't
show up until 2 and another group never showed up at all. We started
the workshop at noon with 20 attendees and ended with about 25
attendees.
The expert was a friend of Florence's and was, by profession, a
microfinance trainer. Unfortunately, his only knowledge of revolving
funds came from a 1963 textbook published by the UN where the
definition did not match our revolving fund. He didn't want to listen
and was constantly interrupting me, arguing that our fund was destined
to fail because we don't require spousal agreements or enormous
collaterals. The expert didn't seem to understand that this was a
workshop for extremely poor women who had nothing to offer for
collateral and only two of them had spouses.
Other than these frustrations, the workshop went over well. Another
FSD intern rented me her organization's space and was a tremendous
asset to the overall process. The small-group work yielded really
terrific response and answers. We asked the groups two questions: 1)
How can we strengthen our identity as LUGADA? And 2) What are
income-generating activities that could use the revolving fund? The
responses were great and I'm going to implement the suggestions before
I leave. Group visits (Ddembe Women's Group visiting Nazareth
Orphanage) and more frequent meetings are easy to arrange.
I leave in a little more than two weeks, but have severely limited
work time. Two days will be spent in Rwanda, one day will be a grant
presentation in Kampala for CIDA (Canada International Development
Association), one day is a birthday party; at least three days are
spent teaching English at the school…that's more than half of my
remaining work days. I also want to finish teaching Florence
PowerPoint and MS Publisher and help her set up adult literacy
trainings for the fall. If FSD grant is awarded to LUGADA, I should
find out today or tomorrow.

Dear FSD,
Please accept my grant.
Regards,
Namugwera