Get Ready, Get Set, Go!

July 22, 2012

The clock is ticking, and our real challenge has officially begun.
After a lengthy discussion about three issues in the community – light
for studying and working at night, refrigeration for milk and
vegetables, and crippling secondary school fees - our design team has
selected the following challenge:

How might we increase secondary school enrollment rates by building
upon existing financial institutions (both formal and informal) and
social networks in the community to plan for and minimize the
financial burden of school fees for families.

Get ready, get set, go, we have two weeks to make this happen!

Milk vs. Cassava

July 20, 2012

Some people simply have a way with words. Our wonderful translator
Gilbert, a 20 year-old Nyarubuye native who taught himself English
after finishing secondary school here, is definitely one of them.

Perched on the only chair in the room slightly above the rest of us on
the benches below and wearing a light blue t-shirt with a cowboy boot
from some random 5K in Texas, Gilbert straightened his posture while
preparing to make an important proclamation. Deep into a meeting of
translators and scholars yesterday morning, he asserted, "You see,
babies drink milk first. They cannot eat cassava. The problem here is
that the people, they want to eat cassava, but they are not ready."
Well obviously, why hadn't we already thought of that?

The scholars had convened a special meeting with the translators to go
beyond the tactical preparations for each day. As our work becomes
increasingly complicated and as each scholar's design team develops
its own agenda and personality, we wanted to bring everyone together
to make sure we are on track as a larger Think Impact team. We do not
know what people are saying when we hear our names around town, and we
asked the translators to help us gauge whether people are confused,
excited, nervous, inspired, or frustrated with our work thus far. What
surfaced in this discussion was very interesting and hugely important
for all of us.

Gilbert explained that babies cannot digest cassava; they must drink
milk. In our work this summer, we are guiding and leading our teams
through an immensely complex process, nurturing them with "milk" in
the form of frameworks and tools that will enable them continue to
pursue new business opportunities long after we return to the States.
Yet much like a baby and despite our best intentions, our teams do not
always understand what the steps we are taking or why. Some people are
getting anxious about our progress while others eager to begin
discussing solutions in earnest (aka "I am ready for solid foods.").
Patience for steps in between (aka drinking the "milk" upon which
everything else will grow) is slowly decreasing. Dare I say they might
not "trust the process?"

All week we have been taking important steps to prepare our teams for
cassava. Two days ago we each led a 90 minute workshop on design
thinking with our individual design teams. I remember feeling confused
about how exactly the process would elicit any truly innovative ideas
when I read my first design book, so you can imagine the furrowed
brows of the women gathered at our meeting as we tried to discuss
prototyping, feedback, and iteration using the example of laundry in
their homes. Their eyes told me, "You want us to do what?" Since then
we have focused on the identification of the challenge we want to
solve, with ideas ranging from how to refrigerate milk to sell at the
market in nearby Rwamagana to how to use less water for cooking to how
to be able to save enough money to pay feels for secondary school. In
our meeting later today, we will decide upon the specific issue in the
community that we want to address. Each of these activities is an
important piece of the puzzle.

Perhaps more importantly, however, we scholars are slowly learning
that aside from completing specific deliverables and outputs, managing
the process, explaining the context, and measuring our design team's
morale and expectations are equally essential in preparing to eat
cassava. In addition to including specific tasks in our meeting
agendas, we are also experimenting with different ways to engage our
teams in discussion of the process itself. We've played games like
"The Wheel of Challenges" and drawn story boards of the steps that
lead to our ultimate goals. Their eyes and their smiles are a good
gauge of if these things are working. We are still drinking the milk,
but buhoro, buhoro hamwe (slowly, slowly together), we are making
progress.

Today already marks the end of the Inspiration phase of the Innovation
Institute, and next week we move into the Innovation phase. Equipped
with the challenge that we will have so carefully selected with our
teams over the last two week, we will begin to brainstorm creative
solutions using the assets already in the community. It is a little
frightening that we have only have 2.5 weeks to make it happen! We are
still not quite ready to eat the cassava, but we are getting closer.
Thankfully Gilbert will be with us for the rest of the journey to
guide us all with his wise and patient words!

Picking Teams

July 13, 2012

I have always hated the feelings of anxiety, uncertainty, and expectation surrounding choosing teams, but this week was different. It brought the most exciting moment of the Innovation Institute thus far: picking our design teams! These are the groups of 4-6 community members with whom we will work for the remainder of our time here. The entire week was devoted to the selection process and to preparation for our first meetings together. The process went like this:

1. Reviewing Assets. In the two weeks of Immersion, we interviewed 40+ members of the community to better understand the assets in the village. This includes physical resources, knowledge, abilities, VABES (values, beliefs, assumptions, and expectations), etc. Before we picked our teams, the scholars met and catalogued not only the assets of the people whom we had met but also those within our Think Impact team.

2. Defining Criteria. Next we individually reflected on the most important attributes of an ideal team member, reflecting on the ways in which our own strengths and weaknesses as leaders and managers will also affect our teams. Each of us used different techniques to do so. Emanuel had a ranking system based on scores in a number of different categories, while I used a table to organize the most important information from interviews. Beyond tactical considerations (i.e. who has a bicycle or knows how to sew), there was consensus that the most important qualities were understanding of and alignment with the Think Impact mission, an entrepreneurial spirit and forward-thinking mindset, and genuine curiosity and enthusiasm for the project.

Notes on assets of various community members

3. Scholar Discussion. We then came together with individually-prepared list of our top fifteencandidates. I had decided to select a team of entirely women, while Tom was interested in having a team of all men. We discussed team dynamics, village relationships, and team goals before creating a paper version of an Excel optimization model that would have made my Darden Learning Team proud. Given that we had all identified slightly different goals and criteria for our teams, there was surprisingly little overlap in our target lists. We each narrowed down the lists to a top 5 with the aim of having a final team of 4-6 community members.

Our team working in the village government office space

4. Design Team Invitations. Armed with our target lists, we were joined by our translators to devise an “invitation pitch” to the community members. Preparing ahead of time with our translators makes meetings infinitely more effective, and Gilbert and I outlined and rehearsed talking points before setting out across the three villagesin which our invitees live. I was shocked at how eagerly people accepted their invitations and how clearly they already understand our objective of our work from our earlierconversations (thanks to Gilbert and friends for such excellent work!).

Prep with our translators

5. Prep for the First Meeting. We spent the remainder of the week preparing for our first design team meeting on Friday. Talking with other scholars, it was interesting to see the many ways in which people found to connect with their teams. One scholar planned the human knot as an ice breaker, while another brought in specific items to spur conversation around assets and issues in the community and another facilitated a game of charades across the language barrier. I chose to storyboard my meeting with drawings of the most important things I wanted to convey (i.e. goals and expectations). Together with this, I tried to learn a few key words in Kinyarwanda, with the hope of connecting with my team directly instead of just through the translator.




Power Point slides by hand :-)



This was a very involved, methodical process, and we worked with each other every step of the way. Picking teams when you have clear goals and a strategy to get there is not as much stressful as inspiring. By the end of this week, we will have had several team meetings, and we will have identified the challenge we want to tackle as a group. I’m feeling confident that I have assembled a wonderful group of women, and I’m looking forward to our discussions this week!

 





My notes from Immersion and profiles of community members





These are a Few of My Favorite Things

July 11, 2012

It would not be a successful trip abroad if the soundtrack did not include at least a few songs from one of the greatest movies ever: The Sound of Music. When shuffling through my iPod a few days ago, I came across a mix from study abroad in Germany in 2004 with “Do-Re-Mi.” Later that afternoon, I caught myself walking around the village humming, “Raindrops on roses, and whiskers on kittens.” In that spirit, here are a few of my favorite things about Rwanda.

1. Cooking with Mama Shalom. The time after our Think Impact work ends for the day and before we sit down to family dinner is my very favorite time of the day here. Preparing dinner is a very involved process over roughly three hours, and I have learned to plant myself near the portable charcoal stove in the back yard outside the kitchen to help Mama Shalom shell ground nuts, peel potatoes and bananas, and stir the pot. Mama sometimes sneaks me an ear of corn or a piece of pineapple while we wait, and we mostly sit in silence except for the repetition of food names in English and Kinyarwanda as we add each successive ingredient to the pot. Neighbors stop by to say hello, and I imagine that they are laughing that I do not know how to cook ubugali (cassava bread). Even so, it is in these moments that I feel most fully present here.
2. Singing and dancing with the neighborhood kids. One day I came home determined to teach the kids a new game from America: hopscotch. Much to my chagrin, they already knew it, and of course they had added more rules, twists, turns, and jumps than I remember from my elementary school days. As soon as I step out of the house, I immediately find a throng of around 20 children at my side every single day. They are eager to teach me a new song, to follow me to a meeting, or to show off a new word they just learned in English class. I have never been particularly good with small children, but early on, I decided to simply jump right in with them. We belt out “Come to Jesus” and “Old McDonald” in the back yard, and I think they are determined to help me master the traditional Rwandan cow dance before August. Sometimes the mothers gather to observe and laugh at this spectacle, but I am laughing and enjoying every minute of it.
3. My name is Meriana. One our first day in the village, a round-faced, barefooted, boisterous two year old chased us down the street yelling, “Muzungo, MUUU-ZUUUU-GO, MU-ZUUUUUUU—NGO,” meaning “foreigner” or “outsider.” These antics became a daily routine, as our new friend, affectionately nicknamed “Muzungo Baby” appeared every time we passed his house. This not isolated to our friend, however, and we often hear echoes of Muzungo following us around town. Slowly, however, this is changing. When we returned from a scholar day trip away last weekend, a pack of kids came running to greet the car yelling my Rwandan name, “Meriana,” and they of course proceeded to follow me home. Instead of hearing Muzungo from the banana fields on our morning runs, I am hearing “Meriana” from the faces we pass. Slowly we are becoming people and not just Muzungos to our new neighbors, and this makes me smile. The best part of this story? Muzungo Baby has learned to say “Good Morning,” AND we learned that his real name is RICHARD!
4. The African Stars and Moon. Since my days camping in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area and my nights on the farm checking on the horses before bed, I have always had a special appreciation for the peace and tranquility of a sky filled brightly with stars without the distraction of city lights. Here we are a 90 minute drive from the capital city of Kigali, and the nearest town with electricity, Rwamagana, is approximately 10 miles away. When the sun sets at 6:30pm, the horizon changes from rich hues of gold and red to an expansive dark ceiling dotted with thousands of stars. Last week was a full moon, and it was so bright that we did not need headlamps to prepare dinner outside. It was spectacular. I am often alone when I go outside to brush my teeth at night. At home we usually do not take the time to look up at the sky, but here I pause. There is something majestic and intoxicating about the blanket of stars that surrounds me, and I head inside for bed feeling thankful, grounded, and ready to tackle another day. 

Where is the Market?

July 9, 2012

One of the books on my summer reading list here is John McMillan’s Reinventing the Bazaar: A Natural History of Markets. I’m about a third of the way through this as we finish the first phase of the Innovation Institute, Immersion. I know that we are in a developing country, but thinking about this book in conjunction with a scholar workshop we had on the innumerable hidden and financial transactions around us, it is amazing to see how the markets in the village are designed, organized, regulated, and function, both formally and informally. 

McMillan discusses markets that bring together buyers and sellers to create gain for both parties. He quotes a dictionary definition of markets as, “a meeting together of people for the purpose of trade by private purchase and sale.” There are many examples in Nyarbuye that fit this definition in the most traditional sense. Shops in our village sell salt and sugar, cell phone minutes, and tomatoes. We have a salon, a carpenter, a bicycle repair shop, and even a water delivery service. All of these are registered with the government and pay taxes, and some have a few employees. We also have many co-operatives, including a women’s handicraft group called “Rights of Women” and an agriculture group called “I’m sick of poverty.” Even health care has a market through the government’s Mutual Health Care program. A bank from the nearby town Rwamagana comes to Nyarbuye to extend loans specifically to women, and neighboring communities gather near the football field on Tuesday afternoons to exchange their goods. Financial transactions and markets are everywhere.

Perhaps more interestingly, the village also relies heavily upon the more informal trading mechanisms upon which the community is built. You can see this in the family that trades for milk while its cow is pregnant, in loans between friends to buy medicine for sick children, and in the financial roles and responsibilities divided between husbands and wives. Even in Nyarbuye, a futures markets of sorts exists, and financially astute individuals are buying sorghum and firewood to store for other seasons in which they predict higher prices will prevail. It is in this latter type of transactions that we are learning much about the fabric that actually holds this community together.

What have we learned from this new knowledge and understanding about opportunities for innovations? We scholars have been reviewing our notes from interviews and experiences during the Immersion Phase, and several major themes regarding opportunities for new or redefined markets have become obvious. These include the following:

• The need for electricity for work, studying, and the completion of daily tasks;
• The high transaction costs of getting water from Lake Muhazi, in terms of time and in the costs of illness from dirty water;
• Difficulty in saving for high fees for secondary school;
• Not just a lack of financing options but a cultural hesitation to take out loans;
• The problem of “small land,” or insufficient acreage to produce a surplus to sell at market;
• High costs of health care and distance to doctors;
• Availability and cost of agricultural inputs;
• Affordable transportation (i.e. bicycles).

What’s next? As we move into the second phase of the Innovation Institute, Inspiration, we will continue to read, observe, and learn about the myriad of diverse markets in the community. We will be forming design teams this week comprised of 1-2 scholars and 4-6 community members. These teams will them think about how to use the village’s assets to create an innovation that will improve and add value in new and creative ways. Stay tuned!

Team Meeting

A parting shot of our team after a sunset meeting by Lake Muhazi! 

Shared Austerity

July 5, 2012

Walking in the bright afternoon sun with my roommate Gabriela (a rising second year in Cornell's MPA program) and feeling the dust accumulate layer after layer on the sunscreen on my skin, we planned our big event for the evening: the much-anticipated washing of our hair. It had been four or five days since our last shampoo, we couldn't really remember any more, and as we watched dinner simmering on the stove, we asked Mama Shalom for some water for a shower. Staring longingly into the basin containing roughly 2L of water, Gabriela came over and said, "How am I supposed to wash my hair with so little water?" Before dinner we compared water saving techniques and enjoyed the fresh scent of our shampoo in our equally curly, clean locks.

Then it was time for another normal dinner in our house: a cassava-flour-based mashed potato-like dish with sauce of cabbage, beans, and tomatoes topped with fresh avocado. We had all finished eating, and at the time in the evening when our nightly cup of chai tea with fresh milk from the cow usually magically appears, Mama said in Kinyarwanda, "Amazi, oya. Muhazi," trying to communicate the following: no water tonight, we will go to Lake Muhazi for more in the morning. Confusion during dinner conversation is simply a part of our nightly rituals, so Gabriela and I looked at each other in disbelief. No water? What? We offered water from our Nalgene bottles, which she promptly refused many times. At our insistence, the kids finally finished off what we had with us, and Gabriela and I stared at each other in embarrassment and shock.

The Asset Based Community Development (ABCD) model championed by Terry Bergdall at Northwestern  on which Think Impact draws heavily describes the idea of "shared austerity." It is defined as, "being genuinely present in the local situation," with the aim of "building a foundation of trust through empathetic respect." This has been precisely the goal for the two weeks of Immersion of the Innovation Institute. Yet despite our best efforts to attend community events and church, to dress in locally-appropriate attire, and to understand the daily highs and lows of village life, I have never been hungry, my clothes are clean, my sleeping bag is dry, and I know that I have a 20L jug of safe water at whenever I am thirsty. People here have told us more times than we can count that water is a problem, but when you see gorgeous Lake Muhazi in the background all day, it is hard to understand exactly what that means. I think this dinner was the first moment that I realized that our neighbors might be going to bed thirsty. Somehow something had just changed for me, and, all of a sudden, I felt like I knew the village in a different way.

Shalom, Jolie, and Agape (the kids) all had water from our "secret" stash before bed, and I the family supply was replenished at sunrise before breakfast. We are very lucky. My team is already talking about the lessons we will bring back to the States with us, and I hope I never forget this dinner. Water is our most precious resource. We can never take it for granted. I know both Gabriela and I will both think a little differently before we complain about our greasy hair next time. Isn't that what shared austerity is all about?