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Ondati market

Well, my Kenya adventure has come to an end. I have been back at work for over a week now, so time to reflect on the experience.  What have I learnt?  What have I achieved - or at least what have I tried to achieve, and was it worthwhile?

First, I must say that overall I enjoyed it - despite the rain and the mud - it was a beautiful place, quiet, peaceful, happy (in spite of the poverty).

I met lots of good people and was invited into their homes.



Nancy - selling tomatoes

 As always, it is good to be reminded of the important things - that health is more important than wealth and that having friends around you makes life more enjoyable than having "stuff".  I didn't notice the lack of electricity, although reading by torchlight attracts all sorts of insects, and I noticed that washing in cold rain water makes your hair nice and shiny and doesn't dry your skin.







Have I made a difference? What did I achieve? Well, I checked out the cash book, and updated several files, I helped to draft the 2012 budget.  I think the principal learnt some new accountancy principles, and I have left him with the beginnings of a Finance Manual, with tips and hints for keeping on top of things. 

Teacher's staff room

I hope I left the School Management Committee with some ideas about how to go forward with their planning, and I spent time with some of the other staff, encouraging and helping them with various ideas.

Inspiring the committee with the Vision and Mission

  I don't think 3 weeks of my time is the answer to all their problems (even with the 2 pads of accountancy paper and several pens, highlighters, and post-its I left behind) but I hope it has added a bit more to what the previous volunteers have done, and prepares some more ground-work for the next volunteer.

Leslie the calf will stay at the school for a while - possibly be allowed to mature into a useful bull.


Bottle feeding Leslie

In the end, it's not for me to say whether it was worthwhile - the School will have their own ideas.
What I wonder though, is whether it is more useful for a professional to go and offer help and support in person, or simply hand over the equivalent cash?  Is the training offered more use than just money? I hope so. Have I just been indulging my own desire to travel and see new places, enjoying myself?
Well, that's a philosophical note to end on.

Several people have asked me whether I would go back (or do something similar somewhere else)?
Not for a while ....

Capacity Building

The challenge set for AfID volunteers is to build capacity in the organisation we are placed with.

Here at Ondati much of the Finance work is done by the Principal; he has a broken laptop (the keyboard doesn’t work so he has a plug-in folding keyboard, but that is also somewhat erratic) and the power supply is very poor so most of the recording is on paper.

I have spent some time with him – see us working on the 2012 budget – but he has had to go away for two weeks so I am working on a Finance Manual to leave behind for him to refer to.

Meanwhile, I met with some of the School Management committee the other day and we looked at planning and reporting. 

We held the session in one of the classrooms – see picture – I think it went quite well.

  We looked at the planning pyramid – from Vision, Mission, through objectives down to tactical planning. I asked them to remember and try to bear in mind the Vision of the founder of the school.  They came up with some very good Mission Statements along the lines of preparing girls for the future, enabling them to be useful and productive members of society, to be successful business people, (the Teach a Man to Fish model uses businesses to support the school and to teach skills to students).  The project officers provided the term “female empowerment” and I reminded them that educating women is a very useful support to families and helps to ensure the education of the next generation, very necessary for the development of Kenya.

We also looked at reporting, learning from the report and revising the plans. They have not been getting regular reports but that is one thing I have tried to stress to the principal; that he needs to meet with the Committee and discuss the financial performance on a regular basis so that issues can be discussed openly and productively.

Today I had a useful session with the Project Co-ordinator, a local man who completed secondary school and is keen to get on.  He oversees much of the work on the projects (businesses), especially the dairy.  We went through the records he keeps for the dairy and discussed some changes the TAMTF volunteers are hoping to put in place.  He was very keen for me to show him some computer work so I created a small spreadsheet and showed him how he could use it to plan a budget – in this case his own household budget as he is aware that it would be useful to plan ahead for bigger expenses.  I think he wants his own laptop now, but it is far outside his reach.  However, one of the new businesses being planned for the school is an IT Resource Centre where printing, photocopying and other services would be offered. These services are in great demand, as well as being required by the school.  So perhaps Ben could continue his training there and even use the computers occasionally if the office isn’t busy.

Talking of changes to the Dairy record-keeping, my colleagues in the Management Accounting section will be intrigued to learn that I have put in place an internal market system. The school takes milk from the Dairy without paying for it and doesn’t record the benefit anywhere. So the profit of the dairy is understated and the cost of the school meals service is also understated. We are going to try to cross-charge this subsidy.  The costs in respect of the dairy are minimal but the same process will be used for the IT centre. This will be extensively used by the school for printing and photocopying, which currently have to be done at a shop in Awendo. The school obviously does not have a printer, it is much too expensive and anyway we wouldn’t be able to run it off the Heath-Robinson arrangement of car batteries that we use for the laptops.

One unexpected side-effect of this capacity-building might not be quite what AfID had in mind: the Principal was so excited by our few hours together talking Accountancy, especially the short lesson on depreciation, accruals and prepayments that he is talking of giving up teaching and re-training as an accountant! He was particularly pleased with the pad of 8 column accountancy paper I gave him, as it will help him structure his reports. I had one and a half pads lying around the house left over from my study days, so brought them out here.

I can definitely recommend it as a useful item to bring especially if you know the organisation is using paper systems.