Wrapping up the Training

Thursday was the final day of our official training sessions, and we made it a full day event. We started at 11am (though we were scheduled to start before 10) and finished off at 630pm. It was a long day but it was focused on setting up the Board for success throughout the year.
Several of the discussions we had revolved around how the Board meetings would run, and how Graham and I could stay in contact with the Board so to keep the relationship moving.
Generally throughout the training, Graham and I would start the conversations with an introduction to the topic, ask the members to discuss the topic, then we would come back together and tell them our thoughts on the topic, summarize and move on. One of the topics though, was creating the oath that all the members would swear by at Bank Day. For this discussion, we told them to create the oath on their own, and we would just review the translation once they had completed it. Watching the Board interact with each other gave me so much inspiration for the upcoming year. Each member was contributing (even Rose, who is quite shy towards us) and each member brought very good ideas forth, from what we could tell from the Luo conversations. I was nervous that some of the quieter members would not be engaged throughout the year, but it proved me wrong!
For lunch break, we all headed into the market and grabbed chapatti and ugali (traditional foods) and got to talk with the members about their lives outside of the position. It was very endearing, and it was an eye opener as well. For each of these members, this Bank really is a source of their livelihood. I am leaving hoping that they will work hard so the project doesn't fall apart. But they are in this position to help the community throughout the year, and they don't see this as a project.
Though we have finished with the training, we are hoping to have about three more touch points with the Board members. We are looking forward to holding individual feedback sessions, as well as having them involved with Bank day. 

Auditing is Awesome

As we told our Board, auditing is awesome. Graham even ran a workshop with the Board members to teach them how to complete this crucial governance task during the year – they need to complete one full Bank audit in November for GIVE. We have taught the Board a very simplified version of how to audit that boils down into one sentence: what Maurice has recorded that we have in the Bank, and what the Commercial Bank Account says we have. Easy, yet elegant.

Our Bank runs on economies of scale. It is too expensive for the majority of the villagers to travel to Kisumu to deposit their money into a commercial bank. Not only is the cost of travel too high for most, but also the fees incurred when setting up an account, or meeting minimum deposit amounts is beyond the scope of the villagers financial powers. Our Bank acts as a middleman, who collects all the villagers’ deposits then only makes one trip into Kisumu for 300 savers each week. [side: the average deposit is about 100 KSh. That’s $1.30. The average Bank account holds about 600 KSH].

So we set up this lovely equation. All of the files are paper based, and kept in three binders that Maurice carries to and from the Bank each operating day. Step one: total up all of the recorded client deposits from the client files. Add to that amount the amount of Project Money that GIVE holds in the same commercial bank account in order for Maurice to pay for expenses associated with the Bank. Next, subtract all of the expenses that have been incurred in the period. This is done by comparing all receipts to Maurice’s expense book. This equals A. Step two: Take the commercial bank balance. Remove all interest that has been added to the sum, and add back any tax and fees deducted. A should equal B.

Only problem with this entire procedure is that the commercial bank account does not fulfill one of the two jobs that it was set up for. Yes, all of the client money that has been deposited is safe and sound, and so is the project money. The problem lies in trying to withdraw the project money. This ‘feature’ hasn’t worked since February, and Maurice has been spending his own money in order to cover all expenses that the Bank has had. This completely messes up the entire equation. It did not make any sense to the Board members as to the way that we had to bypass this error (by only counting the expenses that were able to be paid for with those withdrawals).

THANK GOODNESS FOR FREDRICK

Fredrick has been jumping in to explain concepts to the Board whenever we have needed him. Which seems to be a lot, since a lot of the concepts become lost in translation, whether it is from our side explaining a term, or from the clients asking questions. Fredrick would just jump in, say something intelligent in English, then go right on explaining it to everyone in Luo. If there was a way we could grade the Board on their skills, he would get a mathematical A+.

Even with Fredrick’s explanations, Graham and I aren’t one hundred percent convinced by their ability to complete the entire thing on their own. We’ll be creating a step-by-step auditing procedure in their manuals. We are also hoping that Fredrick spearheads this one

Third Board Meeting

Thursday, May 31^st was our third Board training. By far, it was the most intensive training day of their course. The agenda read something along the lines of:

The Importance of Budgeting

How to Create Monthly Budgets

The Importance of Auditing

How to Audit

Engagement Case Study

The Purpose of the Kanyawegi Community Bank

Creating the Mission Statement and Vision Statement

Organizational Values at the Bank

It was a long day, especially due to the general business education of the Board. Though every single person on the Board is incredibly intelligent on top of having amazing personalities, there is very little business education [side note: one member, Fredrick, is actually on his way to being an accountant! More on his lifesaving accounting skills in another post]. In fact, just re-reading that agenda almost overwhelmed me. Each of the topics covered was done at a basic level, but the responses we received at every turn were very inspiring and energizing.

Before showing the Board how budgeting applied to the Bank and to their positions, we ran through how budgeting could help them in their everyday lives. We taught it to them in a way that they could relay the knowledge to the broader community. Most of the Board are already active savers at the Bank, but showing them how to make a PLAN for their future changed their perspective on the importance of Bank. Halfway through this budgeting introduction, our translator Sally stopped Graham and I and asked if even someone like her, who could only save very small amounts, could make a budget. It was touching when we told her that she most definitely could, and the next day we saw her at the Bank, signing up for a new account!

The introduction to auditing was not quite as smooth as the intro to budgeting. Everyone really understood the importance of auditing; mainly the fact that it fights corruption and makes sure that all the money is accounted for. Beyond that however, auditing is just a buzz word in their vocabulary. We taught them a very simplified auditing procedure (again, described in detail in another post), but the mathematical reasoning skills they have don’t quite jump to the conclusions as easily as we had been hoping. However, we powered through, and encouraged them to ask many questions. I think that when Maurice realised that people outside of GIVE would be critiquing his work, he got a little bit more cautious with how he approaches expensing receipts. He also got a bit defensive, which was expected. But he realises how this Board is here for the long-term success of the Bank, and not because we suspect him of anything, which is a relief.

The engagement case study went incredibly well – once again they nailed all the answers and went beyond what we had planned for. We had set up the case to result in answers such as “the committee members should work together to bring encouragement to the community”. They came up with answers such as “Each person needs a specific role in order to stay engaged over the year, and the supporting body should be providing an incentive program to keep members working hard at their jobs”.

But it was the creation of the directional statements that blew my mind that day. Mission statements, Vision statements, mottos (hakuna matata), Organizational Values, Value statements, you name it and every single organization, business, school, hospital and CBO has them here. However, actually writing these up become very convoluted, and it is very easy to mix them up or have them be ineffective. I was fully expecting to have the group make a bunch of suggestions that were service based, such as ‘offering microcredit’ or ‘opening many branches’, things that really don’t belong in a mission statement. [side: for those unfamiliar with a mission statement, it is the purpose of the Bank, coupled with the demographics of their clients and the needs it fulfills of the clients. Vision statement encompasses the long term goals of the Bank, that align with the mission statement]. The mission statement they developed after FIVE minutes of group brainstorming?

To be an institution that nurtures the culture of saving to help the low income earners achieve their financial goals

Yeah, I almost teared up at that one.

This is the last time I will do an apology blog post I promise. The past five days have been beyond hectic as Graham and I have been working to complete the Board of Director training. This evening marked the last ‘training’ session, so now it’s almost like I have some free time. I guess we do, other than we need to have a fully prepared manual written from scratch ready to go by June 19^th, as well as an up and running Access database.

Reviews of the past five days (has it really only been five days? I don’t believe it, time here moves on a completely different scale, where the days seem to be flying by yet it feels like each day is really three days piled into one) are coming right up, as usual!

Side note: Three more of our girls are arriving tomorrow! Hannah (nutrition), Robynn (Health) and Elisa (Health) are in at 9 am. It’s incredibly fun meeting the travelers at the airport, as the energy they carry is so intense when they catch their first glimpses at the country they will soon be calling home. Safe flights!

Second Board Training

We only had a day to prepare for our second and our third Board trainings, as the schedule had to be changed from what we had originally planned. We used the feedback that we had received to really shape the structure of the second session, which gave us a ton of room to work with.

My Dad helped Graham and I out a few weeks back when we were initially struggling with the concepts of the training. We had previously been looking at it as a mandatory requirement, some sort of obstacle between the elections and the first Board meeting. It was an afterthought, and we were trying to figure out how to make it sound like it wouldn’t be such a burden to the members. Dad suggested that we switched our focus from having it as a requirement to having it as an educational opportunity. Since this is a culture where education is highly valued but few people are highly educated, turning this into a certifiable course would give members an incentive to be involved. I was unsure of if the members would even realise this was what we were trying to do. But listening to the members tell their stories proved me wrong. Rose, who is very shy, told us how she had never been given either education or the opportunity to interact with foreigners. She wasn’t the only one who placed a high value on the education we were providing. I found it very amazing to watch the work I had put into the project transform into an invaluable experience for seven individuals.

 Our theme for the second session was Goal Setting and Community Involvement, which gave the Board plenty of topics to talk about. We tried out role playing between a ‘board member’ and a ‘client’, which did not go as smoothly as we had planned, but gave the members plenty of opportunities to critique ways to talk with clients. We taught the concepts of SMART goals and how to talk with clients about moving forward with the Bank.

We also held a very important conversation on Wednesday with the Board that we had been quite nervous about.We had to bring up the differences between confidentiality and transparency. Both were hotly contested topics at the focus groups, and we felt we had to make it very clear what information we wanted to be spread throughout the community, and what needed to stay within the Bank. Thankfully everyone agreed to what we thought about regarding member privacy and leaking information. What a relief.

First Board Training

As promised, here are my posts about the first three Board training sessions! Only a week late -  in a Kenyans opinion, these are right on time.

The first training was held on Monday. It was exciting to say the least to meet each new Board member. Sadly, everyone ran on Kenyan time and we had to start half an hour late. It was fun for Graham and I to watch the members form opinions of us. We knew Pamela quite well (she is our Momma after all) and our translator Joseph (from the eleven focus groups…) but the other members were people that we had only met three or four times briefly in the past three weeks.

It was apparent that none of the members knew what to make of the training when we started. We started off the meeting with icebreakers, which on reflection I don’t think they regularly use over here. One of the introduction questions we asked was “if you could be any animal, what would you be and why?” Some of the answers we got were a little weak (Graham said he would be a beaver, since they are smart and hardworking. Last I checked beavers just block rivers and look soggy) but others were inspiring. Joyce said she would be a giraffe, since she would use her height to continually look forwards over the horizon. Fredrick said he would be a simba so he can protect the bank from corruption. We found these quite interesting, but the members could not figure out the ‘point’ behind them.

Shortly after coaxing them through the introductions and icebreakers, we got to the good stuff. We had presented a case study about working for the benefit of the community, and they all rocked it. In fact, they actually provided better answers to all the questions than we had anticipated them to have. Brainstorming also gave them an opportunity to get very engaged with their learning. They gave us some great responses to our brainstorm on Ways to Engage the Community Members. However, we shortly had to introduce time limits on their presentations. Brevity is not a widely used skill here.

After the session finished, we asked for some feedback on the pace and teaching style. We got many compliments on the fact that we did not stand and lecture them, but rather had every section act as a different style of discussion. That was a great feeling, hearing that all our hard work paid off to provide them with a valuable experience!

As for the Tea Situation. We presented our idea, but before we even had the opportunity to finish our sentence, all seven members were laughing at the idea. They did not see the point in pooling their tea supplies. That was their choice, we offered but apparently it’s engrained in their culture too greatly to change. We have opted to not provide tea for the remaining sessions as well, as we didn’t see the value in providing tea when they weren’t willing to share either. More updates to come.