Doing what's necessary (collin)

Today we traveled back to Kwale to meet with another group of young mothers who could be potential participants in some of the projects we are thinking of starting. We interviewed each of the girls about their individual situations. We are starting to see a much better picture of the felt needs here in the community and some interesting trends are emerging.

A quick overview of the projects we are considering:

We are thinking of piloting a new relief project that targets very young teen mothers and their babies. The project would include a home for the babies, schooling / vocational training for the mothers, and jobs for marginalized digo women in the village. If it all plays out well, this project could make a drastic difference in 3 generations of Digo villagers at one time.

When we sat down to figure out what all would be involved in bringing this project to life, we were a little bit shocked at how much it looked like it was going to cost. I knew that the figures we came up with were well beyond our reach at the current time. This was somewhat discouraging to me because I really didn't want to put a ton of time and energy into planning a project and then never see it get off the ground due to lack of funding. 

I would rather start small and help just a few people than aim for the stars and wind up helping nobody.

The need that we wanted to target is dire. How could we ignore something so essential? The idea just seemed too perfect to let it go so we have continued to meet with different groups in the villages to discuss their needs and see what we may be able to do.

As I said, we have seen some interesting trends emerging from our focus groups and interviews. We are finding that, while there there is definitely a need for a home like we had envisioned, this represents a much smaller percentage of our current demographic than we had initially projected. In addition to this small group, there is presently a larger number of capable mothers who wish to remain the primary caregiver for their child(ren), but they are in desperate need of assistance with vocational training.

So... there is certainly nothing set in stone yet, but it is looking like we might realistically be able to start the brand new project that sounded so wonderful (the home). However, this would start out on a small enough level that funding would be much more attainable. Due to the fact that the home would be on a smaller scale than we originally thought, this would free us up to be able to partner with an existing project to aid some of the other mothers in receiving vocational training. A portion of the profits from the training program could be invested back into the projects, and over time they could become self supporting.

It could be possible to see new growth in the projects coming from within. Ideally, this would lead to Digo people running, growing, and ultimately funding relief projects for other Digo people. This kind of exponential growth is theoretically boundless when a vision is embraced by the community.

In closing, I will leave you with an appropriately inspiring quote from St. Francis of Assisi that Lindsay read to me today.

"Start by doing what is necessary, and then what is possible, and suddenly you are doing the impossible."