Week 1 Concludes at Mchezi!

We have finished our first week of assessments and are feeling right at home here. Our week was busy meeting community members and assisting the Mchezi CBO staff through some housekeeping affairs and we are looking forward to our schedule for this week! Exciting reports should be coming in daily as we begin our training with CBO staff and helping with various outreach projects. Check back each day!

This week we experienced our first Mchezi CBO executive meeting.







Pictured above (from right to left) is Christopher the MCBO Director, Jordan the Youth Coordinator, William OVC Coordinator, and Mackenzie the Vocational Skills Leader.
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The agenda included:

1. "How/where are we going to sell 256 chickens and at what price? They have been growing for the past six weeks and are now plump enough to have their heads chopped off. Every day they aren’t sold we lose money on their feed and security."
2. "Prices for school uniforms that have been made by the tailor workshop. Selling them is not a problem. They are in high demand throughout the community."
3. OVC Sundays. We had a few simple ideas that could improve the efficiency and order of registering the orphans we didn’t get to. Yesterday was kind of mayhem with some kids running around, some filling out forms, and some getting pictures taken. It’s going to take a few days of shuffling through papers to match all the info up.
   
   

Molly working with William, the OVC Coordinator, compiling the information we gathered yesterday about each orphan. This is the lone computer for the CBO at their satellite office across town.

This was their first introduction to Excel and we think that it will make their lives a lot easier if they stick with it.
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We had our first experience making and eating Nsima (pronounced ‘n-seema’) which is pretty much papp, or maize flour and boiled water. Bland but filling. Gotta learn to love it. It’s all we have out here in the bush.
EDUCATE.INSPIRE.CHANGE.