Cash is not profit
on It began in Africa (Kenya), 10/Feb/2012 14:24, 34 days ago
There's this thing I keep saying to other volunteers and it has become a bit of a mantra for when patience starts waning:"If it was easy, someone else would have done it already"It's a bit of mental trickery that gets you through the day and I have been saying it rather a lot recently.Recently we ran a training of trainers workshop at the National Office. Each branch sent a group member for a week of training in Business Management and Entrepreneurship. The aim was to create a group of peer-educators for each branch to improve the businesses that group members run themselves and the income generating activities of the groups.The training went well, the participants were enthusiastic and after the first day they turned up early and were evening asking questions about the material.Participants studying hard!We only ran into one small problem when discussing income and expenditure: several participants could not get their head around the idea that cash was not profit. In particular the farmers in attendance took a little while to be convinced that they couldn't just spend the cash in their pocket. After going over it a couple of times, everybody seemed to agree with the facilitators, which was helpful to say the least.At the end of the week, we even got the participants to give a demonstration of training to the co-participants, at the end of which a praise sandwich was delivered. I'll be perfectly honest with you, we called it something different when I worked for the bank. Anyway, for most of the participants this was the first time they were sharing knowledge in any structured way and despite some hesitancy and uncertainty they all did remarkably well.Now, for anybody who has ever trained other people or taught, there will be the nagging thought in the back of your mind: "Do they actually understand what I am saying?" "Even if they understand it, are they even going to use this knowledge when they go home?"Well, all the participants wrote action plans for themselves, giving themselves targets and agreed that I should come to visit them in the coming weeks. I did not give much credence to these action plans and expected to have chase, cajole and encourage these new trainers to actually deliver this training in their communities. I am a miserable cynic and I was completely wrong.Last week, I had calls from two of my participants who are based close to Nairobi asking me to come and see them train their groups. I am visiting Anne in Kikuyu on Sunday and I went to see Virginia in Kiambu this week.There she was training a parent support group, asking questions of the parents, answering questions being asked of her. The parents who as you can see are not in their first flush of youth were very eager to learn and expand the current income generating projects that they have; a bead working project and a detergent making project.Virginia training in KiambuI left Kiambu with a spring in my step and feeling a lot happier about the world. Not sure if skills were actually shared or lives actually changed but we're giving it a damned good go.