Reach the Nation conference

This week we have our Reach the Nation conference on, this happens 4 times a year, and all the site coordinators from the 80 Operation Joseph sites and 65 CEDAR sites come together for training. This time the CEDAR site coordinators are being trained in caring for children with HIV, helping children to deal with grief after the death of parents, and how to teach children about HIV/AIDS. As you can see we are focusing big time on children, this is because in the Shona culture children are often seen as not as important as adults so we are trying to address that and help the volunteers to care for the children, especially those with HIV/AIDS or who have been orphaned, and then to encourage families to do the same.
In the Operation Joseph sessions they will be discussing weed control, storage of seeds etc. and working out the details of how to increase the impact of the programme. Sites are being encouraged to set up farmer study groups; so more farmers can receive training. We are being closely watched by DFID, the UK gov development agency because if we are successful this is a model they would like to get all the major NGO's they support to adopt. Quite a lot of pressure to get it right! My (Debbie) role in the monitoring and evaluation will become busier, as we are hoping to expand the programme to include 13,500 families; also we obviously need to do lots of monitoring to ensure the new model is working well.

By the end of the week we should have some photos to show you.