Planning and a radio show

On Thursday and Friday we visited old friends, looked around at things, and did a radio program!  Tom was the “guest” speaker on the Micro Finance radio program on radio Furaha.  He spent the hour talking about co-ops in the US and discussing the formation of SACCOS in Iringa (Tom of course spoke English and Itiweni translated into Swahili - he will do another one discussing the need for savings and how to build the capital base for your SACCOS).  There were lots of call in questions.  (The next day Sandy went over to the radio station and recorded jingles to promote some of their radio shows – so I guess she will be heard in Iringa long after we are gone!)

We went over a visit list with Itiweni on Friday.  So far we are scheduled to visit 14 villages.  After looking things over we added another 8 to the list.  If we keep to this schedule we will be driving out to a village six days a week (I would be surprised if this really works out – but we will try). 

We now have our certificate for the Iringa Hope Joint SACCOS.  After talking to Enoch about this we decided to try to get a training/kick off session in March.  It would be good if I can be here for this session.

Later on Friday we also started working on organizing the information that Itiweni has on the existing SACCOS.  We got through Pommern, discussed reporting needs and timing, and then had to call it a day so that we could get to the radio station for Sandy’s recording. 

Sandy and Itiweni at Tumaini.  We were on our way to the MFI office (Micro Finance Office).  We had just come from the new Science building (we are also working on starting a Science eduation program here).

We stopped and talked to Enock (the MFI director) about our visits and opeing accoutns for the Iringa Hope Joint SACCOS.  Enock was off to do some work in Dar but he will be traveling with Itiweni and I later on next week.

Tom did a 1 hour radio talk show in the evening and Sandy came back to do a series of radio "jingles" for Furaha.