A few weeks ago, I had a meeting with representatives from several recently established drop-in centres, including some from the DIC I visited a few months ago. The meeting was to talk about whether they would be interested in a training programme if Khanimamba offered one; the drop-in centres we are targeting are under-funded, staffed by volunteers who usually have little experience, and generally held together with both hands, so we are hoping that the sort of training we have offered to crèches will now be helpful to drop-in centres.
My supervisor warned me the week before the meeting that I shouldn't expect too many people to show up for the first meeting, and that anyone who does show up may very well be several hours late. Since this is a fairly common experience for everyone who tries to start something new in South Africa, I considered myself forewarned and not too expectant about attendance of the first meeting. Much to my surprise, even though I had come into the office well before the meeting to get some things ready, some attendees had beat me there, and most of the people who ended up attending were there half an hour before we were scheduled to start. We had nearly twenty people from eight different drop-in centres, and no one showed up more than fifteen minutes after our starting time (we actually started on time, or maybe five minutes late but that's on time even in America). Twenty is a great number to start with since it's nearly the maximum number we would ideally like to have in a training class.
The meeting was, on the whole, productive. Probably the best thing that happened was that we got a lot of data about the centres that showed up—things like when they were founded, how many employees they have, if they're registered with the government, receiving funding, etc. that we can put in our files, plus updated contact information for them. We tried to get them to do a couple of "exercises" in small groups that took a lot longer than they should have and didn't really get people thinking creatively, but since most of the small group work I have done with South Africans was like pulling teeth I wasn't too surprised.
My supervisor wanted me to run the meeting since the trainer I would be working with on this programme wasn't here (she was at a family funeral) and they needed to get used to working with me, despite the fact that many of the trainers don't speak English very well and my Xitsonga is not good enough to sustain what ended up being a three or four hour meeting. I gave it a shot, but eventually it became clear that I wasn't explaining the idea of having a training programme very well and my supervisor thankfully jumped in. She did a great job of explaining what we had in mind and it seemed as though most people were interested. Hopefully things will continue to come together and we will start actually offering the trainings in the New Year.
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