Yeah I know its a month late...

Phew, June has been a busy month. A few interesting happenings, more from a work perspective, but all the same pretty good & it actually feels like we have done a couple of things. I've lost track now from where I last wrote, not really sure where I'm up to in terms of what we have done. Last update in terms of what we had been doing was the Inyanger trip, so I think its easiest to forgo chronological order & just give the highlights - its not really going to matter in 10 years time when I'm looking back this what happened on which week!

2 trips to Epworth to meet Elvis, Rod & see boxing
First trip to Epworth, meet one of the local trainers, see some of the young kids that box and taken on a tour of some of the small businesses that are going on there. Make our own beaded butterflies! Very obvious potentials for micro-finance, also nutrition gardens, small-scale biogas, worm farms for waste management and plenty more ideas. I'm keen to do some more stuff there and document some of the urban agriculture that is going on. The only problem is time - getting to Epworth is a 2 hour walk & getting in touch with them is difficult due to the hassles of poor mobile networks. We're also busy with a lot of Kufunda stuff, so that makes it additionally tricky.

One trip with the kids from Kufunda, to show them the boxing. That day we meet three of Zimbabwe's top boxers, based in Epworth in the morning, plus have a dance to some mbira music & visit Rodwell's house. Really lovely guys, and they have a great energy to get things happening in their community. That afternoon we take the Kufunda kids to see the promised boxing competition. It turned out to be actually more of an all comers bout - 'dog-eat-dog' they called it. The ring was formed by the excited crowd and anyone from the crowd could volunteer to jump in the ring to fight against another candidate. Pretty raw, but unfortunately not very good quality boxing for the kids to watch. A couple of the Kufunda kids had a go against each other & did well considering the crowd. Ali ref'd which was important as the Epworth ref would have let them beat each other stupid.

Leadership workshop (5 days)
Working with Marianne & Steve, good experience of designing a workshop. Steve has some interesting concepts in terms of leadership which were good to learn and Marianne had a good control of the design process. Meeting with folk from the communities again is nice and it was interesting to compare their needs with what Kufunda was pushing them toward. There was a realisation that the communities really need assistance with delivering their projects, and Kufunda was providing leadership training (I think which assumed would provide them with the empowerment to get on with their projects themselves). I think it was seen that assisting them delivering projects would be the opportunity that they would have to develop their leadership skills.

On reflection the workshop was interesting to see that it is very much the older generation that are participating. Few people younger than 50 (apart from the Kufundees) were there. Many of the people in these communities had been farm workers, with little experience of having to figure things out for themselves and no requirements for leadership. Now they are having to work to support their grandchildren and take a role in their community to create a better life for the people there. It is difficult to tell but it seems that much of this is a result of HIV-AIDs taking out the middle generation. A very sad state of affairs and sad to see these old Zimbabweans who should be taking peaceful retirement are having to work into their 70s to take care of their grandchildren. Nevertheless these people are here, they are motivated to do something and they are keen to get a number of different projects up and running. Hopefully Kufunda can find ways of enabling them to get on with their projects (& obviously without providing handouts).

Nutritional Garden workshop (3 days)
This was held at one of the communities close to Kufunda - Dunstan. It was planned fairly last minute, with a morning's training in the background from the author of the Healthy Harvest programme. The training was good and emphasised a very participatory approach to the workshop. This approach meant that we as facilitators had to know a broad range of information, and we encouraged the participants to set their own agenda.
The workshop was held in the garage of an old (and must have been very impressive) farmhouse that had now been converted into a school. The first morning was used to set the agenda and identify what the participants wanted to find out. The first afternoon covered food & nutrition, the second day looked at how to grow nutritional gardens & the third day provided some examples of cooking techniques, recipe sharing and evaluation. All up I thought the workshop slightly disappointing considering the training that we had done the week before. It was our second Kufunda- led workshop and we were starting to realize the level of delivery that they were used to providing. There would have been no or little evaluation if we had not pushed for it to be done. I guess that it is the difference between the opportunities and training that we have had, and that the guys here are giving it a go.

Too much computer time
We've been spending a heck of a lot of time on the computer, as we have been typing up the notes & outcomes of the different workshops, and been preparing for the project management training that we're doing. Ali has been working on the lease for Kufunda and we have also been researching and preparing documents for the micro-finance fund that we want to get kick-started. It is little wonder that we haven't been doing that much on the weekends, as we have actually been working a lot of them! In fact when we look at this month we have pretty much been working at least 2 nights a week & on the weekends as well...