Workshop Day 3: Paving the road ahead

Today my group had halved its numbers. By midday we lost Ismael to visa bureaucracy and by mid-afternoon I was a one woman band. However, progress was made, and was probably made quicker by the reduction in numbers of people whose opinions and input had to be solicited, and whose ownership had to be encouraged and assured. This could potentially cause more problems in the long term however.

In the morning we openly discussed the challenges that we would face in the coming months, with Harry asking what would be the most difficult-the beginning, the middle, or the end?  Some optimistic people shouted “the beginning!” but the more realistic among us answered “the middle” and Julie took her cue to relate to us some of the challenges that been faced with the India programme and the challenges of long-distance (business) relationships between two cultures. Lack of (reliable and regular) communication from the NGO side was a central challenge, and Julie tried to manage our expectations about what we should consider to be reasonable . For the main part this would require a reduction in expectation from the corporate side, and for the NGO staff the advice was given that if you don’t have time to respond, at least communicate that you have no time, and reschedule tele-conferences etc, rather than just not tuning in for them, as had commonly been the case.

Late morning and early afternoon was spent in our teams (or in our case-pair), working on the final business model to be presented that afternoon. Irene and I laid out our PESTEL analysis and later, alone, I consolidated all our existing work into one vivid green and yellow power point presentation. It was nice at least to take a break from the role of trainer that I had been required to adopt over the previous days, to ensure that the group made progress. At 2pm the groups dribbled slowly back into the room and the presentations began, kicking off with an extremely professional presentation from the PACE SMS project. Presentations were meant to last for 20 mins, followed by 10 mins question time from the group who would role play as the senior management team. In practise the presentations lasted up to 40 mins and questioning veered off onto tangential topics that would have been better addressed in the breaks, eg. Right before moving on to the next presentation a non Ugandan participant asked “what is the situation of malaria in the country? I really feel this needs to be discussed now.” Fortunately a Ugandan participant gave an unusually concise, well structured and highly informed answer. Harry certainly had a tough time with the timekeeping.

Many of the groups had developed impressive and promising business models through the course of the workshop, although it was often unclear as to who exactly would be doing what exactly over the next 6 months. This was concerning as without allocating tasks and persons responsible it is likely that nothing will happen, or that lots of activity will occur in an unstructured and ineffective way as often happens on development projects. One group was at least clear in what their proposed activities were: to follow the 6 steps to putting together a business model. This however had been the entire purpose of the workshop and I wondered what they had been doing instead. The time for questions was extremely helpful and the senior management team played its part gently, offering helpful insights, suggestions and constructive criticism.

Last but not least, I presented the NACWOLA Community Systems Strengthening model. This was very well received and attracted many compliments afterwards on the work and progress that we had made. I presented our intentions to research and review other models of using community health workers including our own. This would include looking at the other agencies using CSA/CHWs and village health teams (essentially different names for the same group of people in practise doing very similar things but for different donors/gov.) Rather than suggesting that NACWOLA should do this to avoid duplication and overlap, Jon CD of Marie Stopes said that we should be looking to maximise the benefit of this overlap and work in collaboration with one another. Streamlining the use of CHWs is clearly a crucial step that needs to be taken nationally, and the workshop process had helped this issue to be identified and brought to the fore. More on this later

The end of presentations was met with a feeling of relief for many, and had re-enthused others to continue work on their model and to plan out, step by step how things could be taken forward. A round of thanks was dedicated to Harry and Julie for their hard work. I felt embarrassed and upset that we hadn't arranged for a thank you gift to be presented to Julie who has dedicated her professional life to the Pepal mission, and whose vision, energy and dedication and good humour had made the whole thing possible. Beers and chatter followed and I was delighted to be introduced to Maya, the acting country director of NACWOLANACWOLA and Pepal while in country. Having reached the point where I really felt like I was beginning to get to know the other participants, and having shared so much in so little time, it seemed sad to say our goodbyes.