Ghana Trip Four - Wrap-Up

There was precious little time during this trip to just sit back and reflect. In fact, I am already home! I left late Saturday night and got back to Albuquerque on Sunday evening.

I gave everyone pretty good reports during the trip. We accomplished all of our major objectives.

• We have the content we need for the video. We are well on the way to having a very acceptable product I can use for fundraising. It won't be perfect but perfect is not needed.

• We completed all of the focus groups we needed for our community assessment requirement. There was a bit of drama to see if we could actually get two groups of 10 women who were in fact not part of the existing sex worker cooperative. But the feedback I got was that these women were so ready to throw themselves into something that would take them out of the disrespect associated with sex work. I have to say that what really gets to me as I meet more and more of these women and learn of their stories, that it is not the negativity associated with the work itself...it is their hatred of being disrespected that is at the core of their desire to change

•  Not only did we get the full endorsement of our host club in Ghana for the Global Grant application, but I but together a video conference call between the Ghana head and the Albuquerque head. So another brick in the edifice of getting the necessary funding

• Not only do I have five solid proof-of-concept consults going for the JOBS project, but I got a key influencer within Rotary to meet with me one-on-one finally and take a serious look at the prospects of providing business succession knowledge here. 

• I did not get as much progress as I hoped in moving work forward for two more of the Theodora women. One of my potential clients bailed and the other who is in the US has proven very difficult to get to follow-through. On the other hand, my first lady project is doing very and is so confident in her ability to do this work she is now setting up her own Virtual Personal Assistant business.

So as I look at these results and contemplate the next year the watchword will be patience. Let things happen. Put steady pressure but don't get impatient. All will happen as it should.

Ghana Trip Four - In Heavy Work Mode But Keeping Things Moving

The tenor of activity on this trip is very different from prior trips. Whereas at first, it was all about getting my name out, finding potential folks to work with. Now I have a fairly full set of folks that I am working with doing coaching. This includes six businesses I am doing JOBS Project proof-of-concept consulting and three Theodora Project women that I have found work for and am coaching in the doing of their work. The implication of this has been a drop in the number of actual meetings I have had but an increase in the amount of work being done per meeting and in-between meetings.

This trip has also been dominated by two big projects that are required for us to raise money. One has been the second round of video work and the other is the conducting of our focus groups to complete the community assessment requirement for the Rotary Global Grant application. I took charge of the first project while my partner GG has been handling the second. These two have required a lot of time and money to arrange transportation and ensure that everyone is in the right place at the right time (not a given in a country that makes being on-time a rare occurrence).

That being said we accomplished the video shoot and got good takes in an environment much improved over last time. I have actually seen the first cut of the video and while it still needs a lot of work, it is worlds better than our last effort.

The first focus group for our six first Theodora participants took place yesterday. We had a celebratory dinner afterward and all the ladies seemed very upbeat and engaged. So hopefully the last two go as well.

A few more days and this edition of the adventure will be over.

Ghana Trip Four - Storming The Barriers

Three days into Trip Number 4 and significant accomplishments have been achieved. Maybe using the word accomplishments is a bit too strong because it implies that we have done things of our sole accord. It might be better to say significant obstacles to moving forward have been overcome.

As it is late and I am sleepy, I will just cover them in brief.

• First, our host Rotary Club...the club that is critical to the success of our Global Grant request...in a meeting on Thursday expressed their unqualified support for the project. They indicated they would be submitting the proposal shorty. Very exciting and humbling.

•  We did our second attempt at video recording for our promotional video. It went a thousand times better. The advice from fLO Content Marketing was invaluable. All the issues we had earlier with location and equipment were resolved. I am confident we have the raw material we need to produce the video I need.

•   I have work for the third of my six ladies in the Theodora group. There are actually two jobs, one an internet research project and the other a data input on-going job. Both of these are actually Ghana companies they will be working for. Each time I bring a first paying work to one of these women, it is so gratifying to see their faces light up as they realize they will be appreciated, respected and paid for doing this type of work. Even though this project is not supposed to officially start until December 1, the young woman was so excited that she couldn't sleep and started to do the research that very night!

And I am happy to say that I am actually following my stated objective of working much fewer hours and keeping the energy expenditure in line with my actual energy. Am also happy to report that the current apartment rented is in a way better location that has reduced substantially the amount of time in transit.

Ghana Trip Three - Wrapping Up And Heading Home

I am almost at the end of my 8-hour layover in Istanbul before I board my 11-hour flight to Chicago. I really appreciate the fare I got on this flight but I am not appreciating it's extreme length. I am spending the night in Chicago before I complete my journey on Tuesday.

I have been spending my time in the Turkish Airlines Business Class Club which is quite luxurious. I was able to take a shower. I found a couch to lie down and take some more sleep but it was so cold I had to move.

I have made good use of some of this time by working on my Rotary Global Grant Request document. Working on this project is a bit of an emotional rollercoaster. No change that. It is not a bit like being on an emotional rollercoaster. It is being on an emotional rollercoaster. There are times when it feels like everything is coming together...like you are doing these good things and it will all happen. These are closely followed by times when all that is necessary to put into place seems overwhelming.

Don't get me wrong. No regrets. None. This has been such an amazing experience. And I know I am doing good. The rollercoaster is just part of the landscape.

Ghana Trip Three - The Rotary Global Grant Experience

One of the major focuses of this trip is putting into place what we need to win a Rotary International Global Grant to fund the Theodora Project.

Rotary has a wide variety of grant opportunities. But the Global Grant is a vehicle that allows you to leverage the money you can raise by a couple of multiples. So if you raise a dollar in donation, you could end up with two to three dollars total for your project from the matching funds available from. However to successfully do this, Rotary requires you to design your project and submit your rant request in a certain way.

There are a lot of good reasons for this. Rotary wants to make sure that the project is well thought through. They want to know that you have done your homework and the community you propose to serve is fully committed to the project as well as. They are demanding as to the types of activities they want to support and the manner in which the project will be supported. And they want to see how the project is going to be sustainable...meaning the project should be able to continue even after the Rotary involvement stops. 

In our case, a lot of the points that are important to Rotary were a part of project design from the very beginning. For example Rotary wants to see performance benchmarks used as a means controlling funds disbursed during the project. That was already a part of our plan. The sustainability issue mentioned above was already built. As was our serving of specific target populations Rotary wishes to serve.

There were two major components we were lacking - a local club that would be the Host sponsoring the project and a community assessment that needed to follow specific approved methodologies. I had talked to a number of clubs and we have been very fortunate that one club has a senior member who knows my partner GG quite well and a President who has 1) gone through the Global Grheant process and has some experience dealing with our target audience. So great thanks to the Rotary Club of Accra East for partnering up with us.

The issue of the community assessment really took some thinking. To be blunt sex work is usually an aspect of society that most like to ignore or pretend is not there. So there was a question as to what 'population' we needed to assess. As Rotary wants to make sure that the community being served is fully bought in and committed, clearly our small group that will be our initial participants can be considered a community. There is also a wider group that GG works with that is not a part of the initial group that can be considered part of the community. Finally we decided we needed some way of assess the overall community of Accra. Via one of the people I am mentoring, we located a researcher who is willing to take on the project. We will be using a focus group for the two initial groups and a survey plus a focus group from the last.

As I am ending up this trip, the major required components of our Global Grant request are falling into place.