Moving Through Mobilization

The past couple weeks of my project has focused on mobilizing the community of Bugembe to do ONE thing - attend a free training on savings skills. You even get free food out of it! What a deal.

Unfortunately, mobilizing has been harder than I thought. Despite trekking all around the community for over a week spreading the word about the training to groups, schools, and churches, we only received an attendance of 50 on Saturday. Out of a target group of 300. Did I mention that they all arrived 2 hours after the training was scheduled to start?

Fortunately, even though it was a small number, the training was successful and I feel the attendees earned a lot. Hopefully it will translate into a larger number of people attending the second training and signing up for lockboxes!

Part of this problem can be attributed to African time (aka the attendees showing up 2 hours late), and so it's something pretty much out of my control. The attendance is the frustrating part! It shows how essential proper mobilization strategies are in a community where formal advertising doesn't take place and is expensive. Word of mouth is the most powerful form of stimulating people - and it takes time and energy. It takes talking to the right people, talking to a LOT of people, and visiting groups. It also takes knowing that you don't have the easiest product to sell - can you see how difficult it would be to convince people to come to a savings training when they have a deep-seated mistrust of banks?

But the most rewarding part of that aspect of my project is making impact in the community by changing misconceptions and establishing appropriate savings skills! The project isn't just about increasing working capital for the SACCO: it's establishing new culture.