Martine Koopman

We were located 2 hours from Capetown in the small town of Kleinmond. We stayed in a holiday home in small bungalows in a beautiful, inspiring landscape with mountains in front of us and the Atlantic Ocean behind us. What better place could you have to start a writing collective. The idea was not to write just another guidebook, but to bring in the vast experiences of the participating NGO’s to bring theory and practice together in combination with an action research next year in 20 Southern NGO’s to bring the guide as a tool for transforming organizations and Social change into practice.

To develop this we needed to know each other much better, but also to develop our own writing voice. One of the exercises we used for this is the technique of freewriting. In freewriting your pen, rather than your mind decides what to write; the hand leads and the mind follows. As simple as it sounds, it’s no easy exercise and takes real discipline to stick to this simple premise. We did several exercises with a start sentence and 4 minutes of writing. Afterward you had to underline the key sentences and share this with a small group to make a poem out of it. That sounds a bit weird, but actually the poems were quit powerful.

Another method that we used was it always powerful storytelling. With the freewriting exercises we also had described two of our key learning moments. You could share the stories with one of the others, pick one and shared that story with the whole group. During the whole week we told these stories and distilled the general lessons out of these stories to use that to describe inside-out how we have gone through our own learning journeys. These general insights were stored on colored papers on the whole: a big collection of thoughts at the end of the week.

To look outside-in to organisational learning the core group of the writers collective on organisational learning, which we discussed to see what was most inspirational, fascinating but also to define areas for deeper research, missing parts and remaining questions.

On day three we were on a quest for our vision. At 07.00 sharp we climbed in silence the mountain in front of were we stayed. At the top (a 30 minutes climb, through a beautiful landscape, one of the most diverse worldwide in terms of number of plans) we wrote our how we thought the Barefootguide would be used in the world in 5 years time as a free writing exercise. After a lovely walk down through a different path we brought all these stories together in small groups to design the leading image through a very creative drawing process. These three leading images were than shared and brought together into one picture with symbols, metaphors and key words.

The last day was the process that will lead to the development if the barefootguide. The next write workshop will be in May in Egmond (the Netherlands). 

Before that time a needs assessment with some of the partners that will participate in the action research will take place (not at IICD partners) and a similar assessment about current learning practices should also be carried out under the organisations of the writers collective. In the next two weeks it will be more clear what that will mean for IICD. The action research for next year was also designed, but the key question for the next two year were the research areas which needed more deeper research. Also adding the voice of the south more. All of us will contribute more case studies like our thematic learning briefs, our Learn-Work trajectory and country learning reports. We concluded with a mood image of the whole week which was again an creative exercise to trigger your right brain. All in all a very inspirational, intensive and challenging workshop. Looking forward to continue this process in May.

Davy, from SEND foundation, would pick me up on Saturday morning 1st August at 06.00 and he was there on the dot. In clean white he thought that we would only go to Salaga to visit the field office. You could see the flooding along the road. In Salaga we picked up Wumpini, the senior officer of SEND at Salaga, to visit three farmer communities who tested a solar charger for mobile phones in the ECAMIC project. In February A-Solar, a Dutch company, donated 5 solar chargers to test in Ghana in 5 farmer groups. 

ECAMIC is a project where farmers have access to market information through a mixture of channels: notice boards, field staff and mobile phone. All these communities have no access to electricity, although in one community the electricity cable was passing the village! The first community was a very big community with 700 families. 25 of them participated in the SEND farm cooperative. The ECAMIC project provided them with 2 subsidized phones, but now already 20 of them have phones. Mobile phones are booming in the Kalende community, but there is no electricity. No one else has solar power and there are no phone shops where they can buy credits. They are 6 km from Salaga, where everything is available, but that consumes a lot of time and commercial charging is expensive. The solar charger was a huge success. But it was not enough to even charge the phones in the group. With sunny weather the charger could charge 3 phones a day, with clouds only 2. 

They would like to charge 30 a day. Now they have seen the advantages of phones all of them would like to have one. They not only use it for accessing market information, but all their crops (yams, maize, ground nuts, vegetables, etc) are in the system. If market traders visit the village they have a better negotiating position. They also have contact with market traders in Accra and Kumasi by phone. 

The phone is also used to contact people in Salaga to bring goods if they will come to the village or to contact relatives in case of a funeral. The other two communities were smaller. Sogon 1 and Bondando had groups of 20 farm families. In both groups there were 8 phones. They both would like to be able to charge 6 phones a day and more phones for the group for a subsidized rate. All three groups would like to set up a small shop to charge mobiles. They would also charge other phones in the community for a small fee for the benefit of the cooperative, though the small chargers more are meant for personal use than for commercial use. But all have seen the benefits of the mobile phone and the impact it can make on their lives.

What determines the success of an IICD Projectnode meeting? Is it the number of participants? Is it the location? Is it the topics on the agenda? Or the vibrant discussions on practical subjects? What was clear on the 18^th and 19^th September 2008 at the Gemistar Lodge in Lusaka Zambia, is that it was a big success, because everyone went home with a feeling of satisfaction and belonging.

The project node meeting started almost on time with all IICD project partners in Zambia. With the new health project partners on board: Zambian Union of Nurses (ZUNO), Zambian National Blood Transfusion Services (ZNBTS) and Caritas Catholic Diocese of Mongu (DOM-HBC) who attended for the first time, a lot of time was spent on introductions. This was done in a special way. All projects were asked to make a short presentation, based on a template. These presentations were stuck on the walls. During the breaks people could walk around and read each others' presentations. Later in the day there was time to ask questions about eachother's projects.

From the presentations all challenges were clustered around four themes: Technical issues, Management issues, Logistical issues and Culture/Motivational issues. In three groups (Logistical and Cultural together) each theme was extensively discussed and potential solutions were presented to each other. Challenges were sometimes similar, but slightly different, and solutions for one challenge were generating more ideas for other challenges as well.

The challenges that came out was the difficulties to use Open Source software without proper training. This was an issue many of the projects had fased. The project teams had just received two CD’s called NGO-in-a-box (the base CD and Open Publishing) so the solution was easy. Some project teams had more experience than others. E-Brain, the national ICT4D network, has established a Technical Support group with techies from within the IICD supported projects (and other interested techies as well). On the D-group everyone can ask each other questions on Open Source Software or other technical issues. E-Brain will also organise some very practical Open Source Software training to project partners as well. Jennifer from ZUNO:

“I thought that we were the only one with Open Source Software issues, but now I understand that there were more projects with similar challenges who have now already more experience than we.”

Our Monitoring & Evaluation (M&E) partner Kelvin Luputa presented the M&E system again especially for the new project partners, but also as a refresher for the others. A Question & Answer session started with a lively discussion. More partners are now enthusiastic about the M&E system and will go back to collect the necessary questionnaires for an End-user Focus group meeting at project level so that more can be learned about the impact of their projects.

The second day was much more practical. Lee Muzala shared several ways to get connected through GSM dongles and blue tooth connection with your GSM. Many questions were asked and answered.

The last presentation was a joint presentation from Lyson Chikunduzi from the Copperbelt College of Education and Gonzalo Portal from the Mpelembe Secondary School (ENEDCO project) on Local Content Development. Their presentation covered some challenges that both project were fasing, for example how to motivate the teachers. However, the highlight of their presentation was a demonstration of lessons that were developed with the help of Powerpoint and Scratch (animation software). Everyone wanted to do more hands-on training in order to work with it in their own projects.

Most participants went back to their projects with a lot of new ideas that hopefully will find their way to more project staff and end-users to continue the sharing of knowledge and experiences. To get an impression of the project node meeting watch the video 'Project node meeting with all IICD partners in Zambia - Sept 2008'.