Florence's School; Oh, No, Please Don't Ask Me for MORE Money.....

[Guest]

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[Jill]

I just got a quick e-mail from Florence.  The subject heading on it was "Good news."  I think she would have wanted me to share it with you. Her excitement is almost palpable.  It pleased me very much, and I think it will please you all, as well.

Yay, Everybody!  It’s very very fun when you get to feel like you really might be making a difference in someone’s life—in this case, a whole lot of someones' lives.


"Everything seems to be good news to me. You kiva Friends have changed my life,: the way I reason out things is clear very clear. I had several doubts about the future of the school. There is hope and you have sincerely raised  that hope. Your friend is smiling.
 
Diane wrote back and promised to start th posting exercise next week. Brennan, too, received the Web Document  which he was able to open,. I will send him some  of the improved video clips tommorw.
 
Concerning the proposed account abroad  I will send you a reply on that issue after consultation. That is going to be great. Let me get the details and get back to you.
 
Florence."  


NOTE: About that last paragraph:  I had written her about the PayPal Account Holder issue and asked if she might, by chance, have any relatives or lifelong friends abroad whom she might trust and whom we could trust with being the PayPal account holder person.



EDIT:  You know, early this morning, I was thinking that I wanted to encourage all of you to re-read Kiva Fellow Drew Kinder's original blog posting about Florence, if you haven't read or re-read it within the last few weeks.  I read it again, myself, this weekend.  Having done so makes an e-mail like this from this wonderful lady seem all that much sweeter......

[Amy-in-PHX]

Hi Jill, It might be a good idea for you, or someone in the "Mirembe CC" discussion, to make contact with the team captain of the Tareto Maa lending team on Kiva, if you haven't done that yet.  It sounds to me like they may have already made arrangements to transfer money to someone in Kenya.  If they have ideas you could use in Uganda, it could save you from having to re-invent the wheel, as the saying goes.  Here is what their team "About" section says, in part:

We support Tareto Maa, a community in Kenya set up by a wonderful woman called Gladys Kiranto.Her aim and that of the community is to provide refuge and a place of safety for girls at risk of Female Genital Mutilation and early enforced marriage.
We want to raise the profile and awareness of this group to all our friends on Kiva to promote their wonderful work.
Everyone is welcome to join us and we are giving regular updates on the progress made by Gladys and her team. We are currently building a refuge for the girls.

[Diane R]

Spring has sprung for much of the KivaFriends world, and fall is unfolding for the rest. As you've all been led to believe, we hope to make the world just a little smaller once again, by conducting a fundraiser for a project at Mirembe Community College. The College's founder and director, Florence Kaluuba, has a plan for an addition to the school's services which we at KivaFriends may be able to help with. We are calling this the Salon Start-up Fund.

If you're not familiar with Mirembe CC and the work Florence and her staff do there, or the history of KF support of the school, this thread should give you some background. One of the school's courses for young women is a hairdressing course. Their training is hands-on, but it is conducted in a small space, with limited equipment. After successful completion of the course, the graduates have little practical experience to point to when looking for permanent work in the field. This is where the 2011 KF fundraiser comes in.

WHAT IS THE SALON START-UP FUND?
Florence has put together a budget for outfitting two spaces as salons where graduates of the hairdressing course could provide these services to the public. The salons and equipment will be owned by the school, but managed by the graduates along with school instructors, who will help the graduates develop more business acumen. They will charge a market rate for their services (some of the income would go back to Mirembe), and after six months will have practical experience to point to when moving on to existing salons for more permanent work (and opening spaces at the Mirembe salon where new graduates of the hairdressing course would begin their practical training). Mirembe staff will work during this practical internship to help the graduates find paying positions for when their term is up.

Attached below are the details of the equipment Florence would need to make the Salon Start-up a reality. Converting the Ugandan Shillings into US Dollars, her projection is that she needs roughly $3400 to outfit two salon spaces, which would provide employment for 10 hairdressing course graduates. She can also proceed once she has $1700 to outfit one salon space.

[Click on this image to open a larger version in another browser window: it will be easier to read.]



(The complete proposal document is attached at the bottom of this post, if you would like to download it.)

FUTURE POSSIBILITIES FOR MIREMBE CC
Florence hopes in 2012 to be able to provide micro-loans for graduates moving on from the Mirembe salon to another salon, so they can purchase the necessary tools for their work. She also tells me she has been working on a model for broader funding and more self-sustaining activity for the school starting in 2012; I am sure she will share that with us when it is available. In the meantime, KivaFriends have been trying to help in a number of ways, from setting up a website for the school, to exploring contribution sites like BetterPlace and ChipIn, to providing connections for possible sale of Mirembe-made goods online, to setting up a PayPal account which could be used any time someone might want to make a contribution to the school in the future.

CONTRIBUTING TO THE SALON START-UP FUND
We're starting the Salon Start-up Fund fundraiser at KF today. We will run the fundraiser until May 22nd, a week after the May Kiva credit return date, to give you time to ask questions and contribute if you decide to do so. If you are interested in contributing, there are several ways to do so. Please don't be put off by the many options; if it's confusing, just let me know and I'll clarify right away.


Are you a US tax-payer who would like a tax deduction for a Paypal or credit card contribution?
Click the DONATE link under "Donating to Florence's School through PayPal or Credit Card" at the bottom of the Donations page on the Poverty2Prosperity (P2P) website.  (Thanks to Scott of P2P for making the tax-deductible donation option a reality this year!)

Would you like to contribute by check from a US bank, or by using PayPal from anywhere in the world?
Send a PM to Diane R and she'll tell you how. (Note that this fundraiser is running through two Kiva credit return dates. If you are withdrawing Kiva credit into your PayPal account and would like to transfer from there as your contribution, that fits in this category.)

Are you in Europe or elsewhere in the world and want to contribute by cheque or bank transfer in Europe?
Send a PM to Ulrike and she'll tell you how.

Would you like to offer a Kiva Card (formerly known as Kiva Gift Certificates or GCs) as a contribution?
Send a PM to Ulrike and she'll tell you how to send her a Kiva Card code.

If you are unfamiliar with purchasing a Kiva Card and would like instructions, send a PM to Diane R and she'll tell you how.


KivaFriends has helped Mirembe Community College and the young women who are given practical training and critical personal support there three times before. Each time, our help has meant a major step forward for the school. We are hopeful that in the next month we can help provide the funding for a meaningful addition to the services Mirembe CC can offer its students. Thanks for considering a contribution.


--Diane.

[Jill]

Thank you, Diane, for playing your very important part.  It's all of us working together that is helping to make all this happen....

Do you want to see joy and sweetness, personified?
Check out the pic, below.  I just found it in my e-mail box from Florence. She'd sent it to Brennan for her website and copied it to me.


These are children of some of Florence’s students at Mirembe Community College.
The way I look at it, when we try to help Florence help her girls, we absolutely, by doing whatever we’re able to do, are helping these guys, too.   And how could we not want to do that?!?


CLICK ON THE PIC IN ORDER TO GET THE FULL JOY OUT OF IT.

[Amy-in-PHX]

Re the photo of the children of Florence's students:
Quite a crowd of children!  Some lovely smiles, and the boy who is front & center has such penetrating eyes.  Thanks for sharing.

[ulrike]

  

                               Oh, Yes              

 Spring has come (at least at the northern half of the earth)  with     and an occasion
        to help young ugandan girls!

  Do you want to see what they learn in  the hair dressing courses??

  Hereafter the first example

[Amy-in-PHX]

 

                               Oh, Yes              

 Spring has come (at least at the northern half of the earth)  with     and an occasion
        to help young ugandan girls!

  Do you want to see what they learn in  the hair dressing courses??

  Hereafter the first example

NOTE:  One has to click into the actual thread to see the picture Ulrike attached to her post.  If you are reading in "Recent Posts" you won't be able to see it.

[Brennan]

It is with great pleasure that I share this amazing clip with you that Florence has emailed me. In this clip, Doreen (a current student - tailoring) and Betty (a graduate - nursery teaching) share information about their own background, how Mirembe Community College has helped them and even thank the KivaFriends!
 


Enjoy

[Amy-in-PHX]

It is with great pleasure that I share this amazing clip with you that Florence has emailed me. In this clip, Doreen (a current student - tailoring) and Betty (a graduate - nursery teaching) share information about their own background, how Mirembe Community College has helped them and even thank the KivaFriends!

Enjoy

Beautiful young women.  Since Florence asked for advice re how videos could be more helpful to lenders/donors, I will say a few specifics about this here.  These comments are, of course, just my personal opinions, which I offer hoping they will prove helpful.

It was very smart to begin with shots of people at work at their sewing machines, waiting to start the talking for several seconds.  It gives the viewer a chance to get the clip started on their computer, to adjust the volume, and to accustom their ears to the background noise, without having to miss what Doreen says.  Another thing that was really great was the shot of the smiling and laughing children in their classroom, before Betty begins to speak.  Happy children are so engaging and can capture hearts so easily - and it even conveys the idea that Betty is very good at what she does, since her students seem so happy to be in her class.

I found Doreen a little hard to understand, due to accent.  Betty's accent I had less trouble with, but the background noise from the children interfered with my ability to hear what she said.  Captions might be helpful throughout, if they are not too much trouble to add.  But even without captions, I think I got the jist of what they said -- of course, it was that Mirembe had helped them.  And I heard Betty thank KivaFriends very clearly, and noticed the signs on the sewing machine tables.

I think Betty said she came to Mirembe in 2008, when she had a problem and could not get money to continue her university studies.  Mirembe paid her school fees, she studied for two years, and qualified to be a teacher.  Someone off-camera asked her "Are you happy?"  She said "In my profession, I had no hope, but now I have hope.  I thank very much the KivaFriends who are responsible for [paying] the school fees."

I did hear Doreen say "I am 19 years old," but she said something before that, too, which I did not understand.  I couldn't understand what Doreen said about "why I came here."  I think after that she said "My course is data entry."  Then is the part that did have a subtitle, about looking after herself and her parents.   So I didn't get much of the content in Doreen's case.  I think if her course is data entry, it makes me wonder why she is sewing in the video.  But I may have misunderstood the part about data entry, since I don't remember hearing that Mirembe CC teaches that, before now.  I suppose she said "My course is tailoring," instead, but it was not understandable to me in the video.

I hope that the above will be helpful for future video-making.

[cpbailey]

If there is a way to show potential products that could be exported to the U.S., then it would be a good way to gauge interest in colors, styles, sizes and products that could be offered.

This would be a great way to do preliminary research!

Colette