Saturday 26 May 2012

Election Night

The elections wrapped up last night, and it was pretty exciting to say the least. It was surprising to feel so excited during the counting process, not at all what I was expecting. The overall stats were pretty good. 67% of the bank members came out to vote - we are happy with that! [100% was the goal, and Maurice tried suggesting we extend the elections one more day... for democracy you know. We told him that it would be undemocratic to change the dates, since it didn't give everyone the same opportunity or knowledge]
On the note of Maurice, he was not as excited as I had thought he would be. A small part of me thinks this might be because he is scared of the Board. He runs the Bank throughout the year, does an amazing job of it, and knows more about the members and the system than anyone else does. I think he's a bit scared to let these six people into his project that he has built. Completely reasonable, he cares incredibly about the Bank's success, since it has such an impact on the community's life. Another part though that I have made a note of is that many places in Kenya have "Boards" and "committees", yet these really don't do much other than have the title and a little bit of corruption on the side. I think once Maurice realized that this would be a Board Board, one that meets monthly and evaluates both the Bank and Maurice's role as the CEO, he got a little nervous. Not accusing Maurice in any way, but the Kenyan way of doing things is to get things done the easiest way, then re-image the whole scheme to make it seem that it was done another way. 
We will conquer that issue in the Board training, which is set to begin in 30 hours! Surreal - the little imaginary Board that Graham and I have built the training for, whom we just referred to as the BoD now are very much real people!
Introducing Pamela, Joice, Joyce, Rose, Fredrick and Michael - our new Board members!


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