what a day!

late night doing some marketing and brand messaging.  i feel like i'm back in my corporate world. objectives, goals, strategies... oh the joy... early morning at the office to prep for a long day.  pulling the microcredit work together at the last minute in hopes that we'd have time sometime today to debrief it with the leadership or at least the program officer.  as we prep, in comes our friends from the states amit and jill who are visiting their family in kolkata.  amit is the one who introduced me to EMC back in '08... and even that meeting with him was totally by chance... by God's timing and planning.  it really was just random.  it happened at a race i was volunteering at.  i couldn't run cuz i was still recovering from acl surgery, so happened to have camera duty.  met amit and started talking about india cuz i was headed there in just a few weeks... and he said.. you must visit EMC!  and that was that... the rest is history... 2nd trip back last summer... 3rd trip this summer... and many more to come.  i got a 10 year visa after all...

i made a mess... like usual.

we shared a bit on the work we've been doing with the microcredit and shared some new ideas for consideration... i was once again sprinting up and down the stairs as we had a final workshop with the teachers that was added at the last minute focused on team building and trust building.  thankfully janers and albert kept rolling with the microcredit and gna is just so good at teaching these teachers so it wasn't a problem that i was mentally and physically wandering all over the place.  i had attempted to teach some group formation theory but was a total flop... partly cuz i was all over the place since i hadn't decided which model i was going to use until i started talking and also just cuz it was way over their heads or concerns... we used a game from the movie freedom writers to help get these teachers to open up... and it was so good.. so powerful.  it was the game where we lay the masking tape on the floor and ask questions that the teachers must respond to by stepping up to or away from the line - no words, no laughs.  you could really sense a change in the room... a feeling that the room was now safe... that the teachers felt they could be honest... that they were not alone in the challenges they face as teachers... it was amazing to feel and see that transition...

the original plan was for all of us to head to ypf at the school together, but the reality was that there was too much that needed to get done... we needed more time to talk thru microcredit because some strategic decisions needed to be made... we needed time to train our program officer on the new data collection and documentation process... we needed time to just wrap things up at the office.  grace and jane headed out to ypf, and albert and i stayed behind...  we hitched a ride with amit which included a visit to his mom's beautiful grave.. wish i could have met her on earth in person... seems like a wonderful woman... and then we met back up with the team at the big mall near the school.  what a day.