Frying

 Being engaged in cooking my entire adult life, it is interesting how we all have things, techniques, cuisines that we like to cook and others that seem to be a big challenge or out of our wheelhouse. That has certainly been the case with deep fat frying. I think I have always had this image of the fat overflowing, causing a huge fire or dipping on me and causing third-degree burns. Hence a real reluctance to try it. There has also been the question of what one does with all that oil/fat when you are done. If you are not frying on a regular basis, it seems like a lot of waste.

But in our pandemic, locked-down world where I have been cooking more than ever, I was tempted to give it a try. My first attempt was with some leftover lentils cooked Indian style. I thought it would be great as a deep fried fritter. Unfortunately, my means of binding the lentils together was not sufficient and they disintegrated the moment they went into the hot oil (I managed to salvage the lentils by pan frying them as patties). 

But, I had found deep in our freezer a package of shrimp leftover from Daughter #2 when she was here with the family last spring. Most of the time we buy Costco bags of frozen shrimp that nice and separate so I can take out just what Wife and I will eat. But this was a big block of shrimp that had to be defrosted all at once. For some reason, the idea of deep fried shrimp appealed to me. 

In general the experiment turned out pretty good. Flavor and texture were good. Consistency of product from batch to batch sucked. 

You will notice from the picture above a distinct difference in how the shrimp look. This was because I had a very hard time keeping the temperature consistent. For the first batch (the dark upper shrimp), I was getting my heat a bit higher than called for on the theory that the heat would drop when you put the food in. Unfortunately, the heat was quite a bit higher and these were cooked in a fraction of the time I expected.

The second group was the best. (The middle group) After fishing out the first batch, I hurriedly got the next batch in. These seemed to cook just right. BUT, the amount I put in was too large and the temperature dropped below desired.

The third batch (the lower group) suffered from my having run out of breading. Plus the heat would not seem to get up despite the amount of flame I applied. Then suddenly the heat was too hot. So I was scrambling again. 

Despite all this drama, both the flavor and the mouth appeal (the crunch of the crust compared to the tenderness of the food) was very nice for all three batches.  I think I need to be more careful about how much quantity I put in with each batch to help avoid the swings of oil temperature.

Understanding The Theodora Project - Part Five – Introduction to Revolutionary and Transformational Potential – The Hard Work of Refining The End Deliverable

 

It is all well and good to analyze and talk about potential impact. But it is all bullshit if you don’t have a rock solid program for achieving that impact. According to the gospel of Lean Impact, that means you should be testing your service backwards, forwards, inside and out to make sure it performs as required and at the cost needed. Further, you are urged go make your tests rapid and cost effective so you can iterate and refine your offering quickly.

 

As we were doing all our ‘big picture potential impact’ analyses, we were also looking at what we had actually delivered to clients and the level of performance achieved by our participants. I summed this up in my 2021 New Year message to our participants a part of which I have copied below.

 

We can't be content or assume any of this is guaranteed.

No, we are going to have to work even harder if we want these benefits to continue. TGVA has to become a trustworthy, dependable, U.S. service business with minimum involvement from Michael. This will mean a more significant commitment from each of you individually and as a group to raise your professionalism. Of course, you will not have to do this totally by yourself. The entire Theodora Africa Project support team is there to ensure that you have the resources and tools to continue your development. And that support team is growing with new people showing interest in the program. But in the end, each of you has to make a personal commitment to the work necessary for improvement.

What are the specific things you need to be working on?

There are particular things on which I will be asking you to focus.

·       Doing your work with the highest quality.

·       This means doing things right…the first time.

·       It requires double and triple-checking your work for errors, especially little things like spelling and format accuracy.

·       Making sure that all your communication (whether verbal or written) is acceptable and clear

·       You need to hold yourself to the highest standard of response time, both internally and externally. For example, during our official work hours, everyone should be checking their email and texts. Unless there is a specific work-related issue, it should never take more than an hour to acknowledge the communication you have received, regardless of who sent it or why.

·       Do what you say you are going to do when you say you are going to do it. This establishes credibility, one of the most valuable assets we have as service providers.

·       Always give or set a time when you will respond to a request (whether internally or externally).

·       If you are not going to hit the time set, then communicate to the client or co-worker and give them a new estimated date.

While you are working on these, there are lots of other big things happening.

It is almost a bit unbelievable how fast things are moving in the bigger world supporting Theodora. Here are just some of them.

·       Fundraising – I set a goal of raising $40 thousand this year, with hopefully most coming during the first three months. These funds, along with what we are billing clients, would have us covering your stipends plus. It will give us plenty to invest in Ghana, so you have the right conditions to improve professionally. So far, we already have $15,000 committed, most of which has been collected. That is enough to tell our support team to move forward on the most important of the resources.

·       Getting a proper work environment – You, I, and others involved with the program have recognized that we need a physical workspace location. You need regular work hours. These will give you the proper environment to grow and thrive. I have given those responsible in Ghana the green light to make that happen. My goal is for us to be in such a space by the time I arrive in March.

·       Getting proper onsite, daily operational management – If you are to achieve the improvement I challenged you with, you need more help than I can give you from afar. You need someone who is there every day and who has the right tools to teach and guide you and the experience to create a quality work environment. I have given the green light to initiate a search for this as well. My goal is to have this person lined-up by the time I come back to Ghana.

·       Greatly expand our visibility with important U.S. organizations – We occupy a very special space. We have realized that among all those worldwide who say they are trying to keep women from having to resort to sex work, we may be the only one that is addressing that at the most basic level…providing meaningful employment and income. This is opening doors to us that we would not have imagined even two months ago. I am moving my Rotary membership to a virtual club, The Rotary Club to End Human Trafficking (www.endhtrotaryclub.org). We believe working through this club and other organizations will give us much more reach in developing the additional clients we need.

·       The year of the Test! – Last year, we didn't even know if what we proposed was remotely possible. We proved it was. Now we need to prove that we can consistently do the things necessary to be a viable business. Those are all the things on your list of improved professionalism.

·       We need to prove we can develop business without Michael – That’s a lot of pressure on those in that team. They have a goal of bringing in 30 new clients in 2021.

·       Providing you with more training – You cannot achieve the level of professionalism without more training. We are working on getting those resources available to you as soon as possible.

So that's a lot. Please read this, digest it, start getting your questions put together. We will go over it in more detail about what we need to do daily with our first Status Update Meeting of the year on 7 January.

 

Yes, there is a lot our plate for 2021. But we have the big prize we are shooting for…a business that provides a great financial future for not just these participants but many others like them. A business that helps small business in the U.S. It is worth the effort.

Understanding the Theodora Project Part Four – Introduction to Revolutionary and Transformational Potential – The Numbers

Early on in the project, one of my contacts referred a book to me. It’s Lean Impact by Ann Mei Chang. At the time, I was not in the state of mind to be reading anything. But this Fall for some reason I picked up…and was immediately transported. For Ms. Chang (a Google senior executive who changed to the social impact career path), challenged most of the assumptions for building social impact ventures. She attacked the traditional grant funding model as stifling innovation and taking focus away from achieving actual impact and locking impact organizations to working just to get more grant funding. She argued that many organizations look to achieve numbers that look good but don’t actual measure real impact. Her thesis was social impact organizations should look at what could potentially be achieved and be sure that was worth pursuing. Then, using lean techniques, she urged organizations to test, test, and test more to ensure that the model for change offered was practical, pragmatic, and scalable. Lastly she stated that these tests should be done as quickly as possible and with as little cost as possible.

 

I decided to take this approach to heart. And I started by doing some simple calculations of what our impact truly could be if we were successful and developing viable model.

• We pay our participants $400 a month/$4,800 a year. That, by the way, is considered a middle-class to upper middle-class wage in Ghana

•  We charge clients a flat fee of $200 a month/$2,400 a year

• Based upon the amount of time our participants work in a week and their relative productivity, it is not unreasonable to expect a fully trained and productive participant to handle 10 clients.

• That means a participant should be able to bill $24,000 a year. With a direct labor cost of $4,800, the gross profit is $19,200…not bad. 
  

•  Let’s assume we have 10 participants working at full capacity. That would be $240,000 in revenue with $48,000 in direct cost and $192,000 in gross profit.

•  Further assume that overhead and reinvestment use 60% of gross profit or $115,200. That leaves $76,800. If we were structured as a participant owned cooperative we would distribute that to the 10 participants or $7,680 each, That’s a bonus of 160% of the annual wage!

 I would call that significant impact for our participants.

 

But what about big impact?

• Well the U.S. Small Business Administration in the 2010 census stated there were 21 million businesses with NO EMPLOYEES. That’s individuals working on their own. That potentially is our target market. But in fact many of those would never have an assistant. So let’s assume only 20% of the market is really a potential for us. That would be 4.2 million.

• In Ghana a study done in 2016 estimated 80,000 women engaged in sex trade. Let’s assume Theodora Africa could engage 10% of these or 8,000.

• If those 8,000 were working at the rate we discussed and had 10 clients each, we would be serving 80,000 clients, slightly less that 2% market share. That would be 8,000 women out of sex work, earning well more than middle-class incomes, bringing in $19.2 million of export services into the Ghana economy!

That would be what I would call Impact. Something well worth investing in. Of course this is based on a bunch of assumptions not the least of which is our proving we can create very competitive virtual assistants that can serve U.S. clients.

 

More on that in my next post.

Understanding the Theodora Project Part Three – Introduction to Revolutionary and Transformational Potential

 When one looks at traditional social impact programs in Africa they tend to have a similar aspects. They are top down. They are highly dependent on donor funding. They only work as long as the donor funding can keep the program operating. There is as much effort given to finding funding as to delivering benefits. When one measures the actual benefit that is received on finds that many of the programs while definitely delivering good are not exactly transforming the conditions that underlie the problems being addressed. 

I’ve already admitted that virtually everything I’ve done with Theodora has been the project leading me rather than me leading the project. But it has become increasingly apparent over the last three months that this program has the potential to truly be transformational. Note the emphasis on potential. We have a long way to go and a lot to learn still. But let me throw out a three things that have caught not just my eye but the eyes of many who are working with us. I will be going through all of these in more detail in future posts.

 

From the very first we envisioned Theodora as a business model first. It was always our thought that we had to create real jobs with good income if we were going to truly succeed in getting women out of sex work and into meaningful new lives. This meant we never thought of donations as the ongoing revenue stream to be cultivated. But we didn’t anticipate the real economic opportunity from the business model!

 

We wondered from the beginning how difficult it might be to take women who were leading a life that was the antithesis of American business customs and get them to adopt the values and behaviors necessary to operate successfully as virtual assistants in the U.S. In the event, we found that the power of positive reinforcement and real opportunity was like a rain falling on the desert as far as attitude transformation was concerned. Watch this video. It is raw text, not edited. It is our videographer in Ghana who saw the women in 2019 when we did our first promotional videos before we were even launched and now saw them again in October of 2020.

 

We knew we had a particular market we wanted to serve in the U.S. with our virtual services – solopreneurs, individual professionals, and very small businesses. What we didn’t anticipate was the high perceived value our service would give them. These are businesses/individuals that would normally not even think of getting assistant. Although small, the number of clients who stated receiving substantial benefit was far greater than we anticipated. This opened our eyes to a different reality. Our services were bringing benefit to our own economy! This led to a powerful and dynamic messaging.

 

Stay tuned for more detail. AND don’t forget to book your Hippos of Death Safari Tour at de-I Sandia Outfitters Social Impact Tours and to name de-I Africa Transformation Corp as the beneficiary in your will. Remember at de-I Sandia Outfitters Social Impact Tours your loss is our gain!

Understanding The Theodora Project - Part Two - Better To Be Lucky Than Smart

This was advice given to me early in my career. It highlights the reality that no matter how smart we think we are, no matter how hard we work, there is this intangible, luck, being at the right place at the right time. If you read the history of invention, you find all kinds of examples of one person coming up with the ‘great idea’ but it being too early or in the wrong circumstances. Then someone else comes up with the same idea (or maybe steals the idea), and they are in the right place, at the right time and become famous.

 

In the next few posts, I am going to go into a lot more detail why the concepts of the Theodora Project have the potential to be revolutionary and transformational. I want you to consider those two words very, very carefully – revolutionary and transformational. These are not hyperbole. I am actually using them with a lot of careful thought and analysis. AND, I am using them understanding that this because of a whole lot of luck and ‘being in the right place at the right time’ NOT because of any particular brilliance or vision on my part.

 

I want to give you some additional ‘environmental’ context so you will be able to more fully understand why as I go into the details why I feel what Theodora is doing is both revolutionary and transformational.

 

The history of institutional charitable work in Africa is one of incredibly large amounts of money leading to a not so incredible amounts of change. Much has been written about the arrogance of rich country donor activity (both institutional and individual) that has led to donor funds enriching the organizations managing the donations, enriching the government officials that are supposed to see to the application of the funds, or causing more damage than good because of a lack of understanding of local conditions. If you want a good book, that is easy to read, that covers this, I recommend, The Bright Continent by Dayo Olopade.

 

So how did I, a complete novice in anything related to social impact work and the continent of Africa avoid this. DUMB LUCK!

 

Luck meant that when I first went to Ghana, I couldn’t find any existing charitable organization willing to take my ideas under their wing. I didn’t realize what good luck that was at the time.

 

Luck meant that I ended up with Rotary International as my vehicle which allowed me to do my own thing.

 

Luck meant that when I went to Ghana for the first time, I knew so little I just assumed that I needed to go and meet a lot of people and ask a lot of questions. Who knew that is the kind of process that works against ‘developed country bias’.

 

Luck was also that my professional experience has always assumed that I needed to listen first before providing any advice. Good process when dealing with an totally different culture.

 

Luck was meeting the two individuals that pushed me into a completely different direction, a direction that ultimately has proven to have the greatest of social impact potentials.

 

Luck was having a pandemic that forced us (and the world) to go into a virtual mode and change from a classic training model to a more pragmatic learn by doing model.

 

So luck (or divine providence if you want to put that spin on it) is what has allowed this Theodora Project to transpire. In the next couple of posts I will be laying out the reasons why I think Theodora Project has the potential to be revolutionary and transformational.

 

Stay Tuned!

 

(But first a word from our sponsor de-I Sandia Outfitters Social Impact Tours – Do Good Even If You Don’t Return! – Don’t forget to make de-I Africa Transformation Corp your insurance beneficiary!)

 

Understanding The Theodora Project - Part One - Underpinnings

 

 

Why do we do what we do in life? Are you driven by ambition? Do you give a shit? Is life supposed to have meaning? Do you just react to each day, not thinking?

 

Life has a way over the years of leaching whatever one thought was one’s purpose or one’s mission or one’s fate or one’s crap luck into just a realization that you are just a grain of sand on the gigantic beach of life.

 

That is what makes this whole Theodora Africa project surreal. I have always thought I was a pretty bright guy but accomplishment would say otherwise. I like to say I’ve had 1000 brilliant ideas in my life of which 999 where not that brilliant. And the one idea that may be pretty good, this Theodora Project really chose me, not me choosing it.

 

I think I have stated this in other posts (I am over 70 so I have a license from the government to repeat any stories ad nauseum) in no part of my life before had I had even the vaguest, slightest inkling of working on a project to help young women, trapped in a soul-sucking lifestyle (sex work), in Africa!, to transform into professional business assistants doing work virtually in the United States. I mean the concept is simply insane!

 

So humor me and play along that there is some higher power with a very bizarre sense of humor. It has decided it needs a puppet to play this particular role. And OMG what a role it is. As I will unveil (as has been unveiled to me over this last year), it is a such a crazy role. Probably the most intriguing role I’ve played in my life. For if we can figure out, test, and refine our ability to provide the virtual assistant service, the opportunities for these women I am working with and many, many more like them will (in the words of one our participants) ‘be amazing”!

Theodora Project Phase III

 As I sit here in January 2021, it is hard to remember it was just over two years ago that I set off on my first trip to Ghana with only the slightest idea of what I might do or find. Nowhere in my expectations was developing a system to get women out of sex work on my radar screen. In fact, I can honestly say that never in my life did that particular mission ever enter my mind as something I should pursue.

Yet one year later in February of 2020, we were set to launch a test of the prototype we developed. We all know 2020 did not exactly pan out the way we thought it would. Yet despite the obstacles, this project has developed far faster than I could have imagined. 

In this post, I've copied a report I gave a few weeks ago to all the significant people working on the project. It will give you an overview of where the project is as we enter 2021. Then I will do a follow-up post that is going to go into the more interesting 'big picture' aspects of this project that have me totally focused.

 Theodora Project Phase III

Welcome to 2021 and the second year of the Theodora Africa Project. Thank you again for all your efforts and support. When we launched last spring, it was a journey into the unknown. We had no idea of how much transformation our participants could achieve or if we could produce a work product acceptable in the United States. This was all complicated by the world-wide COVID-19 crisis.

In the event, we attained far more than we ever imagined back in February 2020. Last year we (imperfectly):

 

·      Demonstrated we could teach/coach/transform a group of women from our target demographic into a group of motivated workers capable of doing certain virtual personal assistant services.

 

·      Learned which specific services could be sold and delivered.

 

·      Identified who our target market is.

 

·      Provided these services to clients who have expressed their satisfaction and are continuing with us.

 

·      Developed a clear identity and a message that presents our unique value proposition (more about this is the next post)

 

·      Discovered we have massive transformational potential if we can take the next step and gain full professional capability. (More about this too next post)

 

What do we need in 2021 to achieve that full professional capability?

 

·      A proper work environment in Ghana consisting of:

 

o   An office, a place to 'go to work.'

 

o   Onsite day-to-day management to assist our participants in achieving their full potential.

 

·      Significantly improve the overall participant skill set. This means:

 

o   Substantially improved written English.

 

o   Quality control procedures for work output

 

o   Improvement in work turnaround time

 

o   Higher quality client communication practices

 

o   Improving overall IT skills

 

·      Demonstrate a viable new business development capability.

 

·      Be able to execute day-to-day business operations without my hands-on involvement.

 

·      Prove we can replicate the transformation & training results with a new group of participants.

 

·      Demonstrate we can get that second test group integrated into the work system handling U.S. client work and meshing well with the existing group of participants.

 

The above will be the focus of our work in 2021. It is our great test to determine the viability and scalability of the concept. We will be putting our initial emphasis is on getting the proper work environment and improving the overall participant skill set. Our goal is to have the work environment in place by March 2021. The improved work environment will significantly enhance our ability to get the participant skill set improved.

 

We are amid our Phase III fundraising. We have set a target of $40,000 by June of 2021. To date, we have $15,000 committed, 37% of our goal. Further, after working on 11 jobs in 2021 and maintaining 7 ongoing clients, we have set a goal of increasing the total ongoing clients to 30 by the end of 2021.

 

Most have you have or are working on parts of this great initiative. The more we learn about the overall effort to stop sex work and trafficking, the more uniquely placed we find Theodora is for resolving one of the primary root causes – the lack of economic opportunity. All your time and effort is much appreciated and is showing fruit.

 

 

 

The Last Cooking Post, Lasagna = Melancholia

My holiday season cooking binge has come to an end. Not that we are any closer to being out of lock-down and the ennui that produces. No, the sad truth is that I have totally and completely filled my freezers. Yes that's right freezers plural. And with only the two of us here to eat, we probably are down to about nine-months of food. Whew, just enough.

So with that said let's get down to the serious business of food blog posting.

The Component Parts

Cheese sauce using Italian Fontina (instead of Ricotta which I don't like), tomato meat sauce, spinach sauteed with garlic, Italian sausage and meat balls cooked in the sauce, roasted mushrooms

If you are making your own pasta, this flour from Italy IS A MUST!

Seriously the quality of your pasta will be different from anything you make with U.S. bread flour or all-purpose flour

Step One - A layer of olive oil and sauce on the bottom

It is essential, ESSENTIAL, that you use some kind of old, beat up pan when making lasagna!

Step Two - a layer of pasta

I was amazed at how much my noodles expanded when I cooked them

Step Three - a layer of the cut up sausage and meatballs

Step Four - a layer of vegetables

Step Five - Cheese layer one with the sauce and grated cheese

Step Six - Cheese layer two, the mozzarella

I have decided I do not like fresh mozzarella as it has too much water in it. BUT whole milk is mandatory

Step Seven (not pictured) - a layer of sauce

Now repeat steps two through seven to create a second layer

After assembling the second layer, a final pasta layer to seal covered with more sauce and grated cheese

After cooking for one hour at 375

Finished product with a decidedly not-Italian wine

It came out great

And yet despite the culinary success, it was a bit of a melancholy meal. For traditionally, I only make lasagna like this for a group, especially family. And of course in our pandemic world that was not happening at all.

Oh!

Please note and put accolades in the comments section that I actually remembered to take a picture of the finished product AND used the white, presentation friendly plates, for the final shot!