New Blogs from the Four HBA students in Tanzania
L to R: Kinleigh, Jesse, Jackel, Kathleen
The project is slowly picking up pace. We recently videotaped the Mama’s weekly meeting and got caught up to date on the status of the project. It seems as though the project is progressing very smoothly. Each of the Mamas have assigned roles and an election is held once in a while for a new leader. The Mamas told us that there is a treasurer that does the bookkeeping of the business, but we have yet to see the records. Hopefully we will be able to see it soon to check the financial status of the business.
Moreover, thanks to the hard work of the previous interns, the kitchen have finalize a packaging for the yogurt and ready to expand its product into the city’s market. Today, we have surveyed a couple supermarkets in town to gauge their interest on our product with the new package, but received mediocre response. However from that we now know what information the supermarkets are looking for and ways to pitch our product to the retailers.
In addition, we’ve started interviewing the Mamas at the kitchen. We are glad to hear positive responses from the women group about the Western Heads East program. Most of the Mamas do recognize the hard work the interns have put in on their behalf, and they described the interns as being like their own daughters and sons.
From Jackel’s blog: http://jackelheadseast.blogspot.com/
We conducted our first meeting with the Yogurt Mammas this past Monday and it went extremely well. The focus of the meeting was to teach the Mammas how to package and seal the yogurt containers with the new supplies and sealer machine recently purchased in Nairobi, Kenya. This meeting was viewed as a milestone in terms of progression for this venture. For the past several years the Mammas in conjunction with various interns have struggled to find proper packaging for yogurt distribution. The lack of packaging has held the women back from selling the yogurt in locations outside of the main production facility in Mabatini. The meeting ended with two of the Mammas successfully packaging two containers in their first attempt –leading to an eruption of clapping and cheering from everyone in the kitchen.
We returned on Tuesday to perform some further research –narrowing in on personal testimonials from the women about the project. I am mesmerized by these women and how far they have come with this project. I am now beginning to understand how these types of projects simultaneously help people abroad and inspire and educate those contributing their efforts. There is no individual beneficiary in these types of situations.
Two of the Mammas, when asked to recall their favorite moments with the development of the kitchen, spoke about the interns from Western. They exclaimed how excited they were when students arrived and how appreciative they were of the change Western Heads East brings them. The women strive to join the “yogurt production industry” and soon generate enough revenues to employ further women in efforts to empower even more Mammas.
This illuminated that the women have minimal entitlement issues and want to help out their local communities as much as possible. The mammas’ eagerness to grow and begin mass-producing the probiotic yogurt was interesting. Expansion is not simply an objective listed on paper for this venture, but a personal goal held by the Tukwumuane Women’s Group as well.
From Kathleen’s blog: http://kathleenheadseast.blogspot.com/
Read more from Kinleigh: http://kinleighheadseast.blogspot.com and Jesse: http://jesseheadseast.blogspot.com/
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