[July 9, 2010]

With Barefoot MBA under our belts, we can still incorporate some of our original lesson plans. Specifically, we’ll be teaching the process of drafting an Action Plan, creating a Budget, and the skills of Accounting. We have decided that this is still critical knowledge that the students can benefit from.

Combining Malawi-inspired Barefoot lessons on business principles and our lessons on microenterprise implementation, we’re set to teach.

Well, almost. Now comes the challenge of translating all of the course materials into Chichewa (the Malawian language). As Jasper and I discovered from a special American Independence Day gathering at the US Ambassador’s Residence in Malawi, there are many other people trying to tackle the same project of teaching microenterprise skills to Support Group members. We want these materials to have widespread accessibility, especially since we know that they can be useful to so many other people here in Malawi.

But even more than accessibility is sustainability. We will be leaving microenterprise training in the hands of the HIV Support Groups’ and VACs’ facilitator Angela, so we want her to take ownership of the program from the get-go. Luckily, the concept of individualized and varied Barefoot lessons allows her to do just that – pick and choose the business principles that she would like to teach and when. However, the issue of sustainability will also involve finding a way to measure the students’ progress with their businesses. As a result, I think a monthly “progress report” required from every Support Group and Village AIDS Committee would be incredibly useful. We cannot just evaluate based on understanding of the importance of Saving or imitation of a Cash Flow Ledger. We need to make sure the students are using these skills and achieving measurable results! With Angela’s role as a facilitator who spends her weeks visiting the groups out in the field, adopting such a reporting system would be easy to implement.

So that is our plan for this ever-adapting microenterprise program. Time to do some transcribing!