12/09/10

This past weekend the REDES project (girls in development, education and health) had its first provincial conferences in the three provinces of the southern region—Maputo, Gaza and Inhambane. We wanted to have provincial conferences to allow more girls to participate (due to the huge number of REDES groups that now exist in the southern region and to budget limitations only two girls from each group could attend the regional conference, while five girls from each group came to this conference), to make the extra-group activities semi-annual, rather than annual, and to allow individual groups more time to demonstrate what they specifically do. The conference was only Friday evening through Sunday morning, as opposed to the 5 full days that the regional conference is, but we felt that it was still a success: that the girls enjoyed themselves and learned a ton. It was also a nice chance for me to get my feet a little wet as the financial director, though we ran into some obstacles between the bank not switching the names on the account, and being on standfast (meaning I couldn’t travel to a city that has the bank we use) due to the demonstrations around the country. So a fun, though exhausting, 48 hours.
Saturday night we had FAMA REDES, where each group was supposed to present a dance or small theater to everyone. But we were having technically difficulties so only some songs would play. On my cd the only cong that would play was “Love Story” by Taylor Swift, so Ann and I rocked out and led probably the first-ever country dance party in Mozambique.