Saturday 14 May 2011

Reflecting, reviewing and making changes

This week has been busy, full of new strategies and one of reflection.  Once again I’m behind on my blogs as I have had so much to do.  My host mother is also not back until the end of next week as her new job seems to be very busy.   

This week I implement a different strategy to manage work in the office as I need time to work on fundraising.  I have spent most of my first month here devising different ways of project managing the current work programme.  Staff are now in the habit of developing weekly workplans and producing weekly achievements.  I have now gone from discussing these individually to managing this during weekly staff meetings which we implemented on Monday.   

The right way forward, I hope

Thus I now have more time to work on fundraising and I spend most of the week researching on local and international funders.  I identify an opportunity to approach a funder with a micro finance (MF) proposal and I realise that I will need to develop an MF proposal to get this going.  The MF scheme has been researched into and training materials developed within the organisation – thanks to the last international volunteer.  What remains is a proposal to guide implementation.  I do a quick read through of what MF is all about and how to develop an MF proposal and find out that I will need to dedicate and set aside 3 to 5 weeks for this.  Looks like I will need to work on engaging a few funders in the meantime and begin to build some key relationships for the organisation. I know how imperative this is and in my opinion, this organisation needs a long term funder who’s committed to seeing the organisation grow and support beneficiaries on a more sustainable basis.   I plan on making contact with a few potential funders, by the end of this month, and to begin engaging with them.  It seems to me that for a small organisation like this one, building such relationships while developing applications as well as linking up with one’s own personal contacts is probably the better way forward (as opposed to submitting ‘cold’ applications).  

Although I still have the majority of my four and a half months here I’m already beginning to feel like I don’t have much time left.  This organisation has done a lot of work within the community and deserves a boost and I am determined to do as much as I can.