Another guest post from my wife, reporting from Sarajevo, Bosnia.
The Start of the Big Idea
Everything is an adventure when one is discovering a place for the first time – the morning breakfast selection, how to turn the shower on, what to do when a phone charger blows out, the right pronunciation of the basic polite words, where to find supplies when one arrives at the destination and the luggage does not, and on and on. It was therefore a magical moment in a small conference room at the Women for Women offices in Sarajevo when we conducted our first training class on Google Apps – our core reason for this trip. This work is part of a larger technology program being led by Women for Women CIO, Nicole Weaver, that will support the continued growth of the organization from serving around 44,000 women in programs to more than double that in the coming years.
A collection of laptop computers, each a different model from a different vendor, were set up in a conference room, connected together by a labyrinth of cables and a projector. After introductions the first test of the whole day began – everyone signed in… Would all the planning come together? Would the network work? What kind of performance would we have? Would the potential of W4W’s worldwide staff communicating and collaborating in one system together be realized? Success! It all worked. Fueled by Ghirardelli Chocolate and well equipped with swag from Salesforce.com (our employer) and Google (creator of the technology), our first session went off with only a few glitches. Alexa cheerfully and expertly led the class through the exercises while I “drove” the examples on the big screen. A couple hours later, our first session was completed. 9 more to go!
As if that weren’t enough, the big highlight of the day was a field trip to Visoko, a town 30 minutes from Sarajevo, to join one of the twice-monthly meetings of a group of women in the program who were to learn about managing household finances, part of the Life Skills training in the W4W curriculum. The 20 or so women in the class were active participants in learning the concepts: Income less Expenses = Savings (important for “dark days”) and saving for a better future. A diagram of a tree on the wall displayed how this branch was part of a larger “Tree of Rights” women have to build their futures. Small group discussion and activities brought the concepts home. Seeing the bonds the women obviously have and the support they give each other was remarkable.
The special part of the session was saved for the end – mail call. Who amongst the group would receive a letter from their sponsoring “sister” in the US? Three women were lucky today. Groups huddled together to get a glimpse of the foreign text and pictures from lives thousands of miles away. The lucky three just glowed to have this tangible evidence of support. That 1:1 relationship is what distinguishes W4W from other aid organizations. I vowed to write a letter to my “sister” in the Congo as soon as I am back home.
We ended our eventful day with dinner at the Sarajevsko Pivo beer factory, not far from our hotel. Dinner started with a basket of fresh baked bread with an assortment of 5 local cheeses, followed by my new favorite salad – the Sopska (somewhat like a Greek salad without the olives) then topped off with a local dessert that was like a baked apple with baklava filling in the middle – delicious! Fueled by a satisfying meal and the inspirations of the day, a Big Idea was hatched.
What if graduates of the W4W program had a way to stay connected together from their village to a larger network of supporters and experts. My bees are dying, what do I do? I have a bumper crop of pumpkins, who has something to trade? Or a certain road is blocked due to an outbreak of fighting, avoid the area. Maybe Riders for Health (a charity Scott avidly supports that uses motorcycles to get medical supplies to remote villages) beneficiaries in remote villages might connect in to request supplies or to get advice for medical conditions in advance of traveling to a doctor who might be days away? We hatched a big idea that would make use of Salesforce.com Chatter (a social application for organizations), mobile phones, and solar technology that could be world-changing. More to come on that….
Our adventures continue tomorrow with more training and a graduation ceremony for 260 women. In the meantime, you can learn more about the program here.
What better gift for yourself or a loved one this holiday season that to sponsor a woman? Use this link.
