September First Thursday - and looking forward to October September 6, 2010
The discussion focussed on communication issues in general and the sickle cell programme in particular. Zee is currently helping with the sickle cell programme. She belongs at Fantsuam and is back there, during her long vacation from university, so her input guided the focus of the meeting.
Sickle cell and photos
Zee shared more details of the sickle cell programme (a particular interest of Nikki - who used to be a nurse). This included information about the photographic records that are being made, and led to wider discussion about taking and sharing photos, an important aspect of effective communication.
- Elaine - Zee do you use photography in the training materials or diagnosis / testing process ? I noticed on the site before that photos are sometimes taken of injuries and thiings like that. Are photos used for recording purposes in this project too ?
- Zee - Yes they are used. We do take photos in every visit...photos of the children, the population, and the different stages of registration.. One of the team member does it...His name is Mbah we have a specific camera for that
Zee explained that Mbah is a FF volunteer, using a digital camera. We explored issues around sending some of his photos to the UK, but Zee explained that he was not able to get online to send the photos, he had travelled out of town. However she was very willing to try and help. Andy and Nikki gave Zee the information they give to other members of the team in Nigeria about sending photos to us for inclusion on the website, in the hope that she might be able to liaise with Mbah.
We talked about others on the team and taking photos.
- Zee - Chollom, Yakubu and Eddy can assist me...They are ever willing to assist it and they all have that idea
Fundraising
Issues of fundraising came up. We do not have anyone to help us to raise funds for the social programmes we want to support, although we do have the benefit of a registered charity Dadamac Foundation and a mechanism for accepting online donations. This works well when someone is making a request for donations from people in their own network - but we need to find ways of raising money from a much wider group.
We believe that lots of people would like to give money to projects in a more direct, targeted way than is possible through existing large NGOs, and we know that Dadamac Foundation could provide the opportunity for people to give to a variety of valuable and effective projects, where there can be excellent feedback. We don’t have anyone to help us explore fundraising possibilities at present, so we need to keep flagging up our need for people to come and help us - even if it is just by a single coffee morning, a sponsored event, or by helping to raise our visibility.
We also touched on aspects of using Twitter:
- Elaine Hickey: .... if Andy is still here do you think there is anything we can do via Twitter to promote fundraising for the project
- andy broomfield: I'll have to think over it, use a defined #hashtag to start conversation, and we can create links through (and possibly embed) twitter feeds on project page. Also links to donations pages, but remember to reference with hashtag, best to define one (seperate from #dadamac) could be an extension eg. #dadamacsicklecell ?
- Pamela: Tobias of Kabissa has expressed interest in helping us via twitter... (Tobias tweeted Well, if you tweet about a Children's project seeking support, I'd like to learn more about it and share it :) ) ....This came about one day when Kelechi and I were chatting about the computer course for children... One Saturday Kelechi was saying they needed more resources to run the courses for children.... Tobias asked if there was a page anywhere related to raising funds for the children.
Assumptions - and the need for a phone call
It is part of “Dadamac culture” to know that assume is spelled ass-u-me - i.e. ass-u-me makes an ass of you or me - possibly both. We all need to make assumptions - if we waited for the full facts then nothing would ever get done - but we need to recognise that assumptions can lead us to wrong conclusions and misunderstandings. When things do go pear-shaped it is quite useful to be able to recognise - “Ah! That’s where I wrongly assumed XYZ ... oops!” - and then everyone understands and can move forward knowing that particular wrong assumption is now safely out of the way. Of course if you can notice early on where wrong assumptions are being made, and sort them out, so much the better - that’s a key part of the role of a cross-cultural facilitator.
Elaine (in Ireland) and Zee (in Nigeria) had not connected with each other before. I was interested to recognise parts of the conversation where mistaken assumptions were being made. They were tiny details, but point to possible areas of future confusion, and so I hope to clarify them before the next First Thursday. I know Elaine is very busy, but I hope there will be time for a good long phone call. Then I can pick up on some of her comments and questions and give additional background to help her make best use of her next online time with team members in Nigeria.
Public Skype practicalities
We spent some time on practicalities of using public skype. I am still learning about running First Thursdays that way and I needed feedback from people. Elaine (joining us from Ireland) confirmed that she had been able to join by clicking on my status bar (which said “Join this public chat: September First Thursday”). However Andy (who happened to be sitting next to me) needed a direct invitation because the status bar did not work as a live link for him.
Given that others might also not be able to use the status bar link, Andy found the url for me so I could put it on Dadamac’s Posterous. However, by then our small group chat was going well, so I decided not to complicate things by trying to include additional people part way through. The hour flew past and, despite the limitations of using skype, useful information was exchanged.
Next First Thursday
Next First Thursday will be October 7th at the usual time (12.00 GMT, 13.00 British Summer Time and Nigerian Time, 14.00 Central European Summer Time. 15.00 East African Time and East European Summer Time, 17.30 IST, and uncomfortably early in the morning for people in most parts America - our apologies for that).
Unless I have found some other solution it will be a Skype chat again. Please contact me beforehand with your Skype ID if you want to be included (my Skype ID is pamelamclean) then, with luck you can join in via my status bar like Elaine did. For people like Andy, who have trouble with that link, I will try to post the url on posterous at http://dadamac.posterous.com/ once I have set up the chat.
Guest of honour
If you know you will definitely be joining us and want a turn at being “guest of honour” please let me know well in advance. Guest of honour is a role that one person can hold throughout the session, or it can be passed from one to another. It depends on how the session is going. Having a guest of honour is less formal than having a chairman and an agenda, but keeps the meeting more structured than having everyone pulling the conversation in various directions. Everyone shares the responsibility for making the guest of honour feel welcome and able to learn more from others in the group. If we know the guest(s) of honour beforehand it helps us gather others who are most likeIy to have overlapping interests.