off to Rwanda!

I’m off again! This time to Rwanda with a mini stop in Indiana to see my folks and drop the kids there on the way.

Training is underway in Senegal already, and Julie has been posting brief updates so that the rest of the team in the other countries can learn from what is happening there. Over the past few weeks mainly I’ve been catching up on things that were on hold while I was in Dakar, like….

Getting all the equipment for the next two countries, and finalizing training dates. We now have all the equipment for Rwanda and Mali. I’ll take it with me to Rwanda to hand off to Julie. I’ll be there for a total of 3 weeks and Julie will overlap with me for the last week and stay a little longer for a debrief. It will be good to both be there for a part of the training together. I think Julie’s going to be there for the Mali training and I’ll focus on other things during that time.

I’m also working hard to find some additional funding for the Social Change through Social Media workshop that we want to have in Kenya in December. We have a really good outline of what we want to accomplish, now we are just waiting to hear back from a couple of offices to see if they can help fund it so we can actually do it.

We’re getting in proposals for the company that will do the web design for the YETAM project also. We have 3 so far and now we need to hand the proposals over to a committee that will decide which one to actually contract depending on things like the best design, best price, etc. Figuring out the web part has been a challenge because we want to integrate what we are doing into a broader web strategy, but there are a few different websites in existence already, so we’ve been trying to find a solution where we are doing what we want to do with the YETAM site, but also building something that can integrate well with all the other sites out there at the different Plan offices. I think we have it now though, so I’m excited.

We've also almost finished the Dominican Republic virtual visit -- I'll post the link when it's ready. Now just finishing El Salvador and we can make the curriculum DVD that goes with it and send it out to schools and teachers!

Today it’s catching up on last minute stuff and packing. Flights out to Indiana at 7, and then working from there until I leave on Saturday night for DC, and Sunday out to Kigali…. Hopefully I’ll have some web access there but I’m not counting on it.

Till next time….