A Healthy Dose of Competition

I apologize for my blog absence - but getting through this midterm week of my internship has been insane!

I submitted my grant proposal to FSD earlier this week and we held our first brand managers training. Hopefully in the next week I will hear back about the grant so we can start planning for the expansion of our Pilot Brand Development Program through a seminar in August. I wish I had three more months to spend here to really educate these women on the importance of upholding a professional brand image, even in their small businesses. My strategy in all this is a training of trainers. It is best this way, as it becomes more and more likely that I will be leaving Uganda before the program is complete. Our goal is to shower information on newly elected brand managers and then allow the integration of training into their respective savings groups at a more appropriate pace. Luckily/thankfully/every other emotion of relief, after our training the brand managers responded that they are confident in their abilities to educate fellow members on branding.

We are also working to clarify what levels of the Sacco we are branding. Marusacco’s brand is our main focus – attempting to increase their marketing capacity to new members and communities, while empowering members to repay their loans because we mean business!

ORUDE is also working to empower their seven Saccos to function independently, which is burdened majorly by not following policies and low loan recovery. They decided these Saccos are growing beyond ORUDE, and invited the District Commercial Officer (DCO) to their Quarterly Manager Meeting yesterday. I was pleased to settle into a corner of the room to take minutes behind 28 managers, treasurers, and chairpersons.

The DCO spoke about ownership and responsibility throughout his report on three recent audits of ORUDE Saccos. It was definitely interesting, inspiring, and shocking. He repeatedly called for ORUDE to sack one of the secretary managers throughout the 6 hour event. Later I found out I had been sitting by that manager the entire time. I asked my colleagues about it and they just laughed. I still don’t understand if that was appropriate, embarrassing, or just to inspire competition – but they heartily agreed about the manager’s incompetence.

I was proud that Marusacco (my Sacco in Mafubira!) was constantly referenced as an example of good banking practices. Most of all though I think it was eye opening to see how to inspire healthy competition. I have wanted to avoid offending members, but that was exactly the purpose of the Quarterly Meeting. They were publicly compared in a way that removed their individual advantages of claiming that ORUDE was hiding something, or that they are being treated differently.

Inspired, we have taken a more aggressive approach to mobilize members. I am so curious to see how the women of Mafubira respond to their now public group loan repayment rates. Maybe that will inspire the group returning only 8% to pay up.