Tuesday, August 10, 2010
We arranged for the leadership team to meet us at Castle Lodge for our first real business meeting of the trip.
The sewing team fits in some bag making before needing to head into town for the meeting. Watch Sangha Market in early fall for the fabulous results of their efforts.
The braiding team.
We have realized that the best way to get dialog started in our meetings is to start by answering some questions. We began with each of us considering what accomplishments we are most proud of in the last three months (the time since our last visit).
The most common answers centered around the great strides we have made in communication “between the U.S. side and the Zambian side” and the new committees/teams structures we have set up. We could not agree more! Each Thursday the whole cooperative meets to discuss what has happened in the last week and to report news or things to come in the next week. As a part of that, each team reports on their progress. There is a health team, cleaning team, reporting team, scholarship team, and savings and loans team. The health team, for example, will report on illnesses or deaths in the community; the scholarship team reports on how Living Compassion scholarship recipients are doing in their studies, etc. All of this information is typed up and sent on to us by the meeting chairperson. They seem excited that the meeting chair rotates so all members of the leadership take turns typing up the notes and sending them along to Jen. This lends a sense of shared responsibility and management.
Sharing our answers to the questions.
The accomplishments of the particular teams are impressive indeed. The “cleaning team,” which seems to be a broad definition around property beautification, has made the most obvious impact since we were here in May. As pictured in recent blogs, the grounds are impeccable, all the windows of the building (they are great in number) are spotless, there are many newly planted areas and many areas have been freshly painted. It makes a tremendous difference in the feel of the place.
Other accomplishments mentioned were the new industrial sewing machines now in use, the purchase of another piece of property across the road as a place to put pit latrines, and… After all our hard work we had some tea and treats.
Jen opening the cookies, donning her chitenge outfit.
Then the team helped us with our Bridge Walk Bemba fun.
This photo might be useful to you in the Bridge Walk game. Hint, hint.
It was great fun as the team debated really just how to translate the secret phrase our Bridge Walk campaign team has cooked up. Much heated debate.
We had a group photo before saying goodbye.
Front row, left to right: Baby Cheri, Mama Cheri, Veronica, Beatrice. Back row, left to right: Josephine, Nelly, Theresa, Jen, Ethel, Charles.
We spent much of the rest of the day meeting amongst the three of us (Cheri, Jen and Ashwini) and blogging.
Cheri and Jen choosing photos for the blog.