Starting our activities at Kentucky

Having completed our surveys last week, and gotten to know Kentucky farm and the beneficiaries it was time to start our activities. The group was split into two, one team working on market research into both formal and informal markets so they could prepare two reports, and one team preparing and delivering training sessions on internal savings and lending schemes (ISAL).

I was leading the ISAL team, and our plan was deliver 2 training sessions per week for the next two weeks. One of the Caritas staff members delivered a presentation on ISALs during our orientation, which was extremely useful, and so we started work on our presentations.

At Kentucky there are between 185-215 beneficiaries who work the plots, and only a small shed in which we could carry out our training sessions. We therefore split the beneficiaries into 3 groups and ran each training session 3 times in a day, back to back.

The first two sessions on individual self screening and group formation went really well. We had over 100 attendees for our first session, and 75 for the second. In the second session we ran an activity about electing group position holders, such as the leader, treasurer etc, where the beneficiaries had to role play in their groups a good election and a bad election. The role plays were fantastic, there was clapping, singing, dancing, as well as some fantastic acting, including a full faint by one of the participants! We had so much fun with the beneficiaries working through the first two sessions, we cannot wait to return next week and run the next few sessions.

 Team of presenters on day one:

A Baboon listening carefully to the ISAL training!

Training team day 2:

In between delivering activities, as a team leader I still have lots of other responsibilities. These include carrying out team meetings, running our CMI training sessions, meeting with Caritas, discussing the budget and making sure those who are unwell are ok. It certainly keeps us busy!! And next week we have our mid term review, where we report back to Progressio about the achievements we have made and the challenges we have faced, so Friday was spent starting to think about what we would cover in our presentation.