The Sprout Grows And Is Sobered

It has been an amazing first week here in Ghana. When this program started, we understood we were dealing with women who had trauma in their lives…a lot of trauma. As we started to try to bring the initial group together, trying to develop the collaboration and trust needed for good teamwork, this trauma manifested in all kinds of behavior, not the least was outright conflict and antipathy between our participants.

 

Fast forward now two years. I am sitting in our office enjoying the banter between the team members as we are hashing out one challenge after another required to implement Phase II of our project. It’s astounding. It’s mind-blowing. It’s almost beyond belief. That these women who were almost in outright conflict with one another, could now be working as such a cohesive group. Not just working but being confident in themselves to allow each other to tease and be teased in return is so far beyond anything I could have imagined.

 

It is so hard to get across to people who have not experience this saga first hand just how big a transformation we are talking about. The credit for this goes to a lot of people. My co-founder, Gail, who saw this potential. Board members who stepped in a crucial times to intermediate between are participants and between some of them and me when the conflict got really tough. All our clients and our volunteers providing training from the U.S. who feed the steady dose of treating people with respect.

 

What really brought the amount of change to light was starting interviewing for our next group of trainees. We’ve given our existing team the major role in doing this. I am there, participating for sure, but mostly watching them. The compassion, the understanding, the encouragement, the firmness they communicate has one hardly believing they were just like those we are interviewing two years ago.

 

It has also been sobering listening to the stories of these new candidates. Rape, abuse, being trafficked, on and on. A lot of tears are being shed by all of us as the new candidates realize they, just maybe, are in a true trusting environment, with people who understand them, people who are not going to judge their past or close doors because of their past. As one of our women said after an interview looking to our future.

 

“I think this is just the beginning. I think we are going to be listening to many, many of these stories.”

 

That our initial group has gone beyond that to a position of self-confidence and self-belief is nothing short of a miracle, one they clearly intend to pass on.