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Community Training Workshop
Our Quest Team Leader, Sarah, reports on a community training session with Excellent Development.
One of the cornerstones of Excellent Development’s mission is to support community self help groups to achieve solutions to the problems that they themselves have identified. Inherently, therefore, training of these self help groups (SHGs) is paramount to the success of Excellent’s operations and more importantly to succeed in alleviating the problems faced in the drought prone Kola area. It was one of these training sessions that I was recently fortunate enough to be part of. The committees from 12 SHGs in the local area were the target audience for training on Governance of SHGs and a workshop on Mwethya (or “community cooperation”); a fundamental element of Excellent Development’s methods. Sixty eager and excited people descending almost at once (apparently the tube is not the only mode of transport that causes delays…) was a daunting task which the Excellent staff took on with gusto. An initial exercise was swiftly underway to get people chatting one-on-one with members from differing groups about why they joined their SHGs. Then half the room moved round to the right, speed dating fashion, to discuss with the next person the benefits of their SHG and so the process continued until the room was a buzz of mini-conversations. After formal introductions (no mean feat with 60 participants!) it was time for the real work - separating into their SHGs they were asked to discuss the reasons that many SHGs fail and specifically the issue of how to retain members. When the discussion was opened up it was clear that a lot of the reasons which were common to not only the assembled groups but groups all around the world, from remote villages in Bangladesh to Inner-city Manchester. These can be summarised into four key reasons that people will stay in a SHG:- 1. Mwoloto (Mission) – a person will only stay in a group if they believe in the group mission. 2. Wia (Role) – a person needs to feel that they have an important role within the group. 3. Utwio (Decision making) – a person needs to feel they have a say and play a part in the decision making process. 4. Vaita (Benefit) – a person needs to feel that they have both an intrinsic (emotional) benefit and a tangible outside benefit (such as more crops) from belonging to the group. If these four things are satisfied, member retention will be greatly improved. An essential element of any SHG is a unifying Mission Statement. Therefore, the next task was to get the groups thinking about this crucial aspect of a SHG. This is essentially the basic reason the SHG operates and should therefore outline their long-term goal in a short, recitable manner. It should have five points, handily the same as a star…  So, armed with a board, marker pen and EDK’s mission for inspiration, the groups dispersed into the sunshine in order to devise their own inspiring Mission Statement. After presenting their ideas to the rest of the participants it was time for a well earned tea break - something of a military exercise with so many people (mugs from far and wide were drafted in and a dedicated “tea team” were out in force!). With energy levels revived it was Mwethya time. Several lively discussions on community cooperation followed with everyone having their say on the importance and benefit of the old Kamba tradition of “cooperation not competition”. Everyone seemed to have an opinion on how to strengthen both their own SHGs as well as facilitating working between groups for mutual benefit. It was then back to the sunshine for the groups to define the roles of various committee members before presenting to the rest. Individual roles such as the chairman, treasurer and secretary were discussed, as well as potential designated roles for members, such as manager of the seed bank, manager of terracing or manager for discipline (!). The adage of “no-one has two roles until everyone has one” was emphasised to ensure every members involvement. As good governance of these SHGs is crucial to the success of their missions it was very encouraging to see so much thought go into not just the roles that the committees play but the value placed on every member of the group. All too soon it was time to draw the day to a close, not before a bit of an impromptu Swahili sing-a-long – well what African gathering would be complete without a sing and a dance?! Just time for one last cup of chai and a few jokes between new-found compadres-in-development before they were off - leaving the trainers to reflect on a mighty tiring but highly successful day. Read about our community approach here
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